


Addendum

by SergeantPixie



Category: Supernatural, The Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: A Beautiful Mess, Elena in s1 of spn, F/M, Hunter Elena, Slow Burn, a giant fucking mess, idk what this is, the slowest slow burn god I'm so sorry, yes i do
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-05-07
Updated: 2018-04-19
Packaged: 2018-06-06 21:32:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 27,825
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6770989
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SergeantPixie/pseuds/SergeantPixie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Dean shows up to ask Sam to help him find their father, he isn’t alone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Pilot aka What I Can't Carry, Bury

**Author's Note:**

> This is a birthday present for a dear and lovely friend of mine, Belle. Love, I hope you like this, because I've worked my ass off on it;) basic premises: Elena in season one of Supernatural. So obviously it takes place during season one of Supernatural, and less obviously, it takes place two years after the season three finale of TVD, ignoring all events after that. There will be a chapter per episode, with three added that are specifically Elena-centric, because shockingly, she does have her own storyline. Two of her chapters will be flashback chapters that will explain how exactly Elena ended up with the Winchesters. The first one will be chapter two and the next one will be at just about the midpoint of the story.
> 
> Obviously, a lot of the dialogue is lifted directly from the show, as this is a direct rewrite of season one, and hopefully my additions will blend well. I hope you enjoy, I'm very excited, and very nervous about this. Without further ado, we shall begin our story.

"Man, Dean, we were raised like warriors," Sam says, following his brother out into the night. The impala is parked right out front, and shockingly, there's a girl perched on the back hood. Sam stops.

"Uh, hi?" he says uncertainly, all previous arguments momentarily forgotten.

She smiles and lifts a hand to wave. She's roughly the same age as Sam, maybe a year or two younger, and very pretty with long dark hair and sparkling brown eyes.

"Hey," she replies, shooting Dean an amused look. "Did you forget to mention me?" she teases. Dean rolls his eyes, completely unperturbed by her presence.

"I didn't really have an opening," he shoots back dryly. "Get off my car," he adds.

The girl raises her hands in surrender and slips off the car, landing on her feet. She turns to Sam.

"Hi, I'm Elena," she says, holding out her hand. He takes it.

"Sam," he replies, shaking her hand. She nods.

"I know," she replies simply, slipping her hand out of his and tucking it into the back pocket of her jeans.

"So are you two," he gestures between her and Dean, and Elena laughs.

"You laugh every time someone asks us that," Dean accuses, looking slightly grumpy. Elena just grins at him.

"That's because the idea of you with a girlfriend is hilarious," she retorts.

Dean opens his mouth, an offended look on his face, but Elena doesn't give him a chance to continue their playful argument.

"Your dad was friends with my- my father," she stumbles over the last couple of words, but continues. "He took me in after my father died."

Sam frowns.

"Oh, I'm sorry," he mumbles, wondering why his dad would do that. He isn't exactly the paternal type. She shrugs a little like loss is something she's used to.

"I went to pick Elena up from the airport and found out Dad hadn't called her the entire time she was gone," Dean speaks, breaking the awkward silence.

"I was visiting my brother at college," she adds.

"Dad never goes that long without checking up on her, so that's how I figured something was wrong," Dean continues.

Elena nods in agreement.

"It is strange, but I wasn't too worried until Dean said he hadn't heard from him either," Elena says.

"He's in trouble, and I need your help, Sammy," Dean says. "I can't do this without you."

Sam shakes his head, glancing at Elena.

"Yes you can," Sam contradicts. Dean looks away, and shrugs a little.

"Yeah, well I don't want to," Dean replies simply.

Sam sighs, reluctance weighing down his bones. Still, he opens his mouth, and asks the one question he's been trying so hard to force down since Dean had announced that their father had gone M.I.A. on a hunting trip.

"What was he hunting?"

Dean turns to open the trunk, the news articles all prepped and ready to go. Elena hangs back, already privy to the information, and she doesn't feel that it's necessary to include herself in the explanation.

"So when Dad left, why didn't you go with him?" Sam asks, sparing a glance for Elena, wondering how involved she is in the supernatural world.

"I was working my own thing, down in New Orleans," Dean explains.

Sam gives him a skeptical look.

"Dad lets you hunt alone?" Sam asks, his tone almost condescending.

Elena snorts. Dean shoots her a glare before he responds.

"Dude, I'm twenty-six," he says indignantly.

Elena raises an eyebrow, and Dean quickly amends his statement. "I'm not usually alone," he adds.

Sam blinks in surprise at the implications. He looks at Elena.

"You hunt with him?" he questions.

"Sometimes," she replies. "And sometimes I hunt with your dad instead."

Sam stares at her, unsure of how to reply. She's unknowingly just answered his unasked question, not only does she know about the supernatural—which he already assumed—but she's also a hunter. He wonders how she got involved in all of it.

Dean speaks up, cutting off Sam's musings.

"Anyway, I've usually got back-up, but _someone_ ," he looks pointedly at Elena who raises an eyebrow saucily in response, "just had to go visit her brother at college, so I was solo on this one," he finishes.

Elena rolls her eyes, like they've had this argument before.

"It's his first year at college, forgive me if I felt the need to check on my brother and make sure he's settling in," she shot back.

Dean gives her a disbelieving look.

"Admit it, you just don't like New Orleans, you always avoid jobs in New Orleans," he accuses.

Elena shakes her head.

"No I don't," she says flatly. "Aren't you supposed to be explaining John's case to your brother?" she reminds him.

He gives her a look, like the conversation isn't over, but turns back to the folder to show Sam.

Sam, feeling bemused by their bickering, tries to focus on what Dean is telling him. He can't help but wonder if maybe there's more going on between them. Elena had flat out laughed at the idea of them dating, but after only five minutes, Sam can tell there's something there.

"Maybe he was kidnapped?" Sam suggests dryly, referring to the man who'd disappeared, focusing again on the case.

Dean shakes his head and shows him all the other victims. Then Dean brings out his ace in the hole, the voicemail from their dad.

In the voicemail, their father tells Dean he needs him to pick Elena up from the airport because he can't do it, then he rambles cryptically about something happening, ending the voicemail with a warning.

Sam's more focused on the EVP, so he doesn't quite get the significance of the first part until Elena tells him.

"He always picks me up from the airport," she says, and Sam looks at her. "Really, he'd prefer if I didn't go at all, but I have to see my brother."

Dean nods his head. "She's been with us for two years and he's always the one to take her to the airport and the one to pick her up when she gets back," he agrees. "It was weird that he asked me to do it instead, but then Elena said she hadn't heard from him either, and that's how I knew something had to be wrong."

Sam frowns and wonders if there's any delicate way to ask this.

"Why would he be so concerned about you all the time?" he asks. "I mean, needing to know where you are and keeping in contact all the time. That's kind of extreme, even for him," he elaborates.

Dean gets this strange look on his face. Elena looks away from them, and when she speaks, she's speaking to the empty street.

"There are a lot of reasons, believe me, we don't have time to get into them," she finally says. She turns back to look at Dean. "You should show him the EVP recording," she tells him.

Dean still has that stiff look on his face, but he nods. Very abruptly, Sam realizes his question has been swept under the rug with no real explanation.

_"I can neeever go home."_

The woman's voice is eerie and it sends chills down Sam's spine in a way that's all too familiar. _Like riding a bike_ , Sam thinks ironically. Dean closes the trunk, turning to look at him.

"Been almost two years, never bothered you, never asked you for a thing," Dean says.

 _Two years_ , Sam glances at Elena, that's how long she's been with his father and his brother. Had his father already taken her in the last time he'd talked to his brother?

Dean's looking at him expectantly, and Sam finds that his resolve is non-existent at this point.

"All right, I'll go," he agrees, glancing over at the silent Elena. Her face is unreadable. He looks back at his brother, who looks almost relieved. "I'll help you find him, but I have to get back first thing Monday, just wait here." Sam starts back to his apartment, a list of necessary supplies already entering his head.

Dean gives him a bemused look.

"What's first thing Monday?" he asks.

Sam stops and turns back to look at him, hefting himself to his full height, his chin tilted upward with pride.

"I have an interview," he tells him.

"What a job interview? Skip it," Dean dismisses easily. Elena thumps him in the back of the head and he gives her a nasty look, which she returns with one of her own.

Sam turns to face him fully.

"It's a law school interview," he contradicts. "It's my whole future on a plate."

"Law school?" Dean echoes, an unimpressed look on his face.

"So do we have a deal or not," he asks, ignoring his brother's tone.

Elena cuts in before his brother can make an asinine remark.

"We'll have you back in time," she says, and Sam gives her an appreciative nod, but keeps his eyes on his brother. Dean rolls his eyes but nods in agreement.

Satisfied, Sam turns and heads back inside to get his things and make his excuses for Jess.

"Do you always have to be such an ass?" he hears Elena ask Dean, but the door closes behind him before he can hear his reply.

While he packs, he wonders if he should say something about Elena to Jess, but he can't think of anything to say that doesn't sound completely insane.

_My brother showed up out of the blue needing my help to find our dad and he has a strange girl with him, and even though they both swear there's nothing going on between them, I'm not sure if I believe them._

Right, because that would sound completely reasonable. So instead he just smiles and reassures her that he'll be back in time for his interview. When she kisses him goodbye he tries not think about those nightmares he's been having about her and ignores the foreboding feeling in his gut.

When he gets outside, Dean's already behind the wheel and Elena's curled up in the backseat, half asleep. Feeling slightly unsure, he steels himself before he throws his bag into the trunk and slips into the front seat.

* * *

They're at a dirty old gas station, and Sam's trying to find something to listen to that doesn't remind him of a bad action movie when Dean comes out offering him junk food for breakfast.

"No thanks," Sam says, shaking his head. Dean shrugs and pulls the gas pump out of the car. Sam can't help but needle Dean about their credit card scams while Elena's still in the store, getting her own breakfast. When Elena comes out of the store a few minutes later, she has two muffins and a cup of coffee, a far more traditional breakfast.

"Lemon poppy seed or blueberry?" she offers Sam, and he takes the blueberry one gratefully. "Good choice." She nods approvingly as she slips back into the backseat. She'd flat out refused when Sam offered to switch with her, pointing out that his legs are much longer than hers.

Sam turns his attention back to his brother.

"I swear man, you gotta update your cassette tape collection," Sam complains.

Elena snorts from the backseat, and Dean tosses her a look.

"Why?" Dean questions, looking genuinely baffled. Elena stifles a giggle, which earns her another look.

"Well for one, they're cassette tapes," Sam starts. "And two, Black Sabbath? Motörhead? Metallica? It's the greatest hits of mullet rock," Sam complains.

Elena makes a noise of agreement, which earns her a third look, but she ignores it.

"House rules, Sammy, driver picks the music, shotgun shuts his cakehole," Dean says charmingly.

Elena leans forward, resting her chin on the back of Dean's seat, looking at him.

"Don't you mean pie-hole?" Elena asks innocently, unable to keep her mouth shut any longer. Sam snorts Dean looks back at her, and she gives him a completely innocuous look.

"Are you sassing me, Gilbert?" Dean asks, the serious look on his face ruined by the way his mouth twitches like he wants to smile at her. Sam deduces that Gilbert must be her last name.

She gives him an affronted look, all innocent doe eyes and fluttering lashes.

"No of course not," she says, sounding scandalized, "I wouldn't do anything of the sort," she assures him, a smile tugging at the corner of her mouth.

Sam glances between them, amused.

"You're lucky you're pretty," he tells her seriously.

"Right back atcha," she retorts instantly.

Before Dean can reply, Sam cuts in.

"Are you guys always like this?" he asks, amused.

"No," Dean says. "Usually we're much worse."

Elena nods in agreement. "We're on our best behavior because we have company," she adds.

"Dean has good behavior?" Sam asks and Elena laughs.

"Watch it, Sammy," Dean says, pushing in a cassette tape.

"You know, Sammy is a chubby twelve-year-old, it's Sam, okay?" Sam insists, the music starting.

"I'm sorry, I can't hear you, the music's too loud," Dean replies, shooting him a grin. Elena gives Sam a sympathetic look as she settles back into her seat, putting on her seatbelt.

Eventually Sam gets Dean to turn the music down. He makes calls to the local morgue and hospital while Elena and Dean banter like it's their second nature and Sam wonders if they realize what it seems like to an outsider.

"Check it out," Dean says.

Elena and Sam look ahead of them to see a familiar sight—police cars and crime scene tape all converging around a bridge. Dean pulls over to the side of the road.

"Well that was fast," Elena murmurs from the backseat and Sam snorts in agreement.

Dean leans over Sam to get into the glove compartment and pulls out a couple of (fake) federal badges. He grins and hands one over to Sam. He turns briefly to Elena.

"Stay in the car," he tells her, and she rolls her eyes but nods her head anyway.

Sam gives Dean a questioning look. "Why does she have to stay in the car?" he asks.

"We're less memorable without her," he explains. Sam glances back at Elena who shrugs. "It's the legs," Dean adds, and Elena thumps him in the back of the head. He ducks forward, but grins and continues anyway. "And the hair, and the face, and the—"

"I get the point," Sam cuts him off. "She stays in the car, okay."

Dean and Sam get out of the car to approach the situation ahead of them, meanwhile Elena sprawls out across the backseat, her phone in her hand.

"Do you usually leave her out of this part?" Sam asks. Dean shrugs.

"Sometimes. I like to think of it as saving her for the right moment," he says. Sam raises a curious eyebrow, so Dean continues.

"You don't play your aces right up front, you wait for the right moment," Dean explains.

Sam's not exactly sure what he's supposed to say to that, but luckily they've come upon the crime scene, so he's saved from having to reply.

"You fellas had another just like this last month didn't you?" Dean says to the two officers, easily getting into character.

It takes Sam a little longer, but when he opens his mouth to start asking questions, it comes easier than he thought it would. As he listens, he takes note of all the abnormalities, and tucks away small bits of information that wouldn't seem that important to other people—like the girlfriend putting up missing posters downtown.

Dean opens his mouth and the sarcasm is thick enough that Sam honestly wonders how he ever works cases alone. Sam steps on his foot before the words are even completely out of his mouth.

"Thank you for your time, gentlemen," Sam says, leading Dean away from the crime scene before he can say anything else.

When Dean sees that no one is watching him, he thumps Sam in the back of the head with all of Elena's finesse.

"Ow, what was that for?" Sam hisses.

"Why did you have to step on my foot?" Dean counters.

"Why do you have to talk to police like that?" Sam shoots back.

Dean gives him an incredulous look and steps in front of him to stop him.

"Come on," he says with disbelief. "They don't really know what's going on. We're all alone in this," he points out. "I mean if we're gonna find Dad, we've got to get to the bottom of this thing ourselves."

Sam clears his throat, moving his chin slightly to indicate that someone was behind them. Dean turns to see another officer with two men in suits.

"Can I help you boys?" the officer asks.

"No sir, we were just leaving," Dean says. "Agent Mulder, Agent Scully," Dean quips; leading Sam away quickly.

Back in the car, Elena is still sprawled across the backseat, happily texting away on her phone.

"So what'd I miss?" she asks dryly.

"The whole carnival," Dean shoots back.

"Darn, and I could really go for some funnel cake too," she deadpans, and Dean snorts. As he drives away, she sits up, leaning forward.

"Seriously though, what's up?" she asks.

So while they drive into town to find the victim's girlfriend, Dean gives Elena a brief rundown of events on the bridge, with Sam adding in details every once in a while.

In town, it doesn't take them long to find the girlfriend, she's with her friend and a giant stack of Missing posters.

"I bet you that's her," Sam says and Dean nods, they move to head over towards the girl as her friend wanders off, but Elena stops them.

"No offense, but there are times when I _am_ less memorable than either one of you," she tells them. "And this is definitely one of those times."

Dean and Sam stare at her blankly. She sighs and elaborates.

"Two strange men coming up to a girl on the street and interrogating her about her missing boyfriend? That's pretty memorable," she says. Sam starts to see where she's going with this. "But," she continues. "A girl casually running into another girl and expressing her concern for said missing boyfriend, maybe catching up on some of the local gossip? That kind of thing happens every day."

With that, Elena turns, flashing them a smile over her shoulder while she casually walks towards the girlfriend, Amy. She glances at the missing poster, and then says something to the girl. The girl replies, and in no time the two of them are chatting like old friends.

"See Sammy, right moments," Dean says, clapping Sam on the shoulder, grinning proudly at Elena.

Amy looks comfortable with Elena, and the sympathetic, understanding look on Elena's face is perfectly sincere in a way that makes even Sam kinda want to spill his guts to her.

"She's good at this," Sam observes, a touch of awe in his tone.

"People like Elena," Dean replies simply.

"I can see that," Sam says, still watching the two girls.

After a couple of minutes, Elena gently touches Amy's elbow and says something, and then surprisingly, Amy throws her arms around Elena and hugs her tightly. Elena hugs her back and then waves as Amy and her friend walk away.

Sam and Dean make there way over to Elena. Elena turns back to look at Dean, who's standing right behind her. She grins up at him and he smiles back at her.

"So what'd you learn?" he asks her.

She points to a diner across the street.

"I'll tell you once we've ordered," she says and Dean laughs.

He hooks an arm around her neck and steers her across the street towards the diner, Sam trailing after them.

"It was the funnel cake thing, wasn't it?" he asks and she nods.

"I've been hungry ever since," she confesses, and Dean laughs.

Once they're seated, Sam gets his first up close look at how strangers interact with Elena, and it's fascinating. She instantly has the waitress smiling and chatting about her day like they've been friends for years and Elena looks fully invested in the conversation, her face lighting up every time she smiles at the waitress. Elena is more than just personable, she's magnetic, everyone wants to know her, and when given the opportunity, they bask in her attention like she is the sun.

The waitress leans down to tell Elena her favorite dishes on the menu like it's a secret. It's like Dean and Sam aren't even there—normally Dean would be charming the pants off the waitress and Sam would be rolling his eyes like the straight man he was born to be, but this waitress seems to think Elena is the only one at the table. She remembers to take their orders though—barely.

When she's gone, Elena turns to them and leans forward to fill them in on what she and Amy had talked about.

"A hitchhiking ghost who offs the people who give her a ride? That's original," Dean says dryly once Elena is finished. Elena rolls her eyes.

"Well that's the story Amy told me," she replies, shrugging her shoulders.

"We should find the library after this, do some research," Sam suggests. Dean nods reluctantly.

"That's a great idea," Elena agrees, smiling at him. Sam can see why everyone likes her, her smiles are infectious and he can't help but smile back at her.

After they're done with their food, they head off to find the local library and search for information on the hitchhiking ghost.

They hit the jackpot when Sam theorizes that it was a suicide—not a murder. Constance Welch jumped off the bridge they'd just been at earlier that day after her children drowned in the bathtub.

While they wait for it to get dark outside, Sam continues to research, Elena and Dean bantering in the background and occasionally aiding Sam in his search.

When they reach the bridge it's dark out, and Elena hesitates before she steps onto the bridge.

"I don't really do creepy bridges," she tells Dean when he asks what's wrong.

"You scared?" Dean asks, smirking. She glares at him.

"Yes," she replies, but she follows him onto the bridge anyway.

They end up at the side of the bridge, looking down over at the water, and Elena has a vaguely nauseous look on her face.

"So this is where Constance took the swan dive," Dean says, seemingly unaware of Elena's distress. Sam however, has noticed and is about to ask what's wrong when Dean catches his eye and shakes his head, indicating that he shouldn't ask. Figuring that Dean knows Elena better than him, Sam shuts his mouth.

"So you think Dad would've been here?" Sam asks instead. Elena backs away from the edge, putting space between herself and the side of the bridge and the two brothers.

"Well he's chasing the same story, and we're chasing him," Dean replies logically, stepping away from the edge. He heads over to Elena, who looks calm and collected again, he touches his hand briefly to her elbow as if asking a question and she nods in response. Sam marvels at their silent communication for a moment before pressing on.

"Okay, so now what?" he asks.

Dean is looking around the bridge, so his attention is not on Sam when he answers.

"Now we keep digging 'til we find him, it might take a while," he replies.

"Dean, I told you, I've gotta get back by Mon—"

"By Monday," Dean cuts him off, turning around to look at him. "Right, the interview," he says, his voice bordering on contempt. "I forgot," Dean admits. "You're really serious about this, aren't you?" Dean asks, continuing before Sam can reply. "You think you're just gonna become some lawyer? Marry your girl?" Dean says, his voice full of derision.

Sam can see he's itching for a fight, and Dean doesn't seem to care that Elena is standing right there and can hear everything he's saying, so he decides to do the same.

"Maybe, why not?" Sam replies defensively.

"Does Jessica know the truth about you? I mean does she know about the things you've done?" Dean asks straightforwardly.

Sam can feel his hackles rising, and he glances over at Elena who has been silent for a long time. She's still looking at Dean, her face soft with understanding and Sam wonders what she knows that he doesn't.

He looks back at his brother, and replies.

"No and she's not ever going to know," he insists, moving closer, losing his cool.

"Well that's healthy," Dean replies sarcastically. "You can pretend all you want, Sammy," Dean continues. "But sooner or later you're going to have to face up to who you really are," he finishes, turning around to walk away.

But Sam is ready for a fight, so he follows after him.

"And who's that?" he asks.

Dean sweeps out his hands, gesturing to himself and the still silent Elena.

"One of us," he says. Sam still can't quite relate the word hunter to the sweet, understanding girl he's only known for a day, but his hackles rise at the comparison between himself and his brother.

"No," he denies forcefully. "I'm not like you, this is not going to be my life," Sam insists.

"You have a responsibility," Dean argues, spitting out the words like he's been holding them back since he broke into Sam's apartment yesterday and attacked him.

"To Dad and his crusade?" Sam counters, and he can see the defensive set of Dean's mouth, always ready to defend their father's choices. Ignoring him, Sam barrels on. "If it weren't for pictures, I wouldn't even know what Mom looks like," he admits.

While they've stopped walking, Elena has wandered in the opposite direction, trying to give them space to have their moment.

"And what difference would it make?" Sam continues. "Even if we do find the thing that killed her, Mom's gone, and she isn't coming back."

His declaration is too much for Dean, and Sam soon finds himself shoved back and pressed up against the bridge's support beam. Elena moves forward, intervening for the first time.

"Dean," she says, her voice full of gentle reproach. Dean doesn't look over at Elena, never breaking eye contact with his brother.

Finally, he speaks. "Don't talk about her like that," he scolds, his voice surprisingly soft.

He lets go, moving back away from Sam, and Elena moves closer to Dean. He turns, like he's going to say something to her, but Elena's attention is elsewhere, so Dean follows her line of sight.

Noticing their sudden rigid postures, and the way they are both fixated on something further down the bridge, Sam moves closer to them and follows their line of vision. A cold chill slips down his collar to trace a shiver down his spine.

A figure in white stands up on the railing at the side of the bridge, her hair loose and wild around her, her clothes torn. She turns back to look at them, her eyes catching Elena's, and the two girls—one dead, one alive—do not look away from each other for the longest moment. When at last Constance breaks their eye contact, she turns to fall face forward into the river, setting them all running toward her, despite knowing they're decades too late to save her.

All three of them lean over the edge, searching for her.

"Where'd she go?" Sam asks.

"I don't know," Dean replies.

Suddenly they hear the familiar sound of the impala starting. Dean turns almost instinctively, unsure if what he is hearing is real. Elena and Sam follow him. Once they all see the car on, they slowly start to back away.

"What the fuck?" Dean says, summing up everyone's feelings perfectly.

"Who's driving your car?" Sam asks stupidly.

Dean pulls the keys out of his coat pocket in response.

Suddenly the impala starts driving towards them. Sam and Dean turn to run, Dean grabbing Elena's hand to drag her along with them.

"Go, go, go," Dean orders, his hand still clasped tightly with Elena's. The impala is quickly gaining on them, and when Elena veers towards the railing, the other two seem to understand her thought process and vault over after her.

While Elena had neatly flipped herself over the railing and is still holding onto it, toes balanced on the tiny ledge hanging out, and Sam had managed to grab ahold of a bar on his way down, Dean hadn't been quite as lucky.

Sam pulls himself up beside Elena.

"You okay?" he asks her and she nods.

"Yeah, are you?" she replies, slightly breathless. He nods.

"Yeah," he echoes. Together they look over the edge to where Dean is dragging himself out of the river.

"Dean!" Sam calls down to him. "Hey, are you all right?"

Lying on his back, covered in mud, Dean makes the OK sign with his hand.

"I'm super," he replies sarcastically, and Elena starts to giggle. Set off by her laughter, Sam starts to chuckle, until the two of them are clutching the railing—and each other—for dear life while they cackle at the ridiculous sight of Dean covered in mud.

" _SHUT UP_ ," Dean shouts, but they just keep laughing, far too gone to stop now.

While Dean treks his way back up to them, Sam helps Elena back over the railing, the two of them still giggling occasionally.

By the time Dean is back on the bridge with them, they've managed to contain their mirth to nothing but the occasional grin.

Dean looks over his baby, and Sam clears his throat, trying to be nice.

"Car all right?" Sam asks, a laugh threatening in his voice.

"Yeah, whatever she did to it, seems all right now," Dean replies. Elena has her giggling much more under control than Sam, so when she speaks, there is no trace of laughter in her voice.

"That's good," she says. Dean looks over at her, and she gives him her best Bambi look, he shakes his head at her.

"That Constance chick, what a _BITCH_ ," Dean declares, glaring out into the night.

"Well she doesn't want us digging around, that's for sure," Sam says grimly.

Together the two brothers sit on the car, after a moment Sam turns to Dean.

"You smell like a toilet," he informs him, and that sets Elena off again. She laughs so hard she has to sit on the ground, and Sam can't help but laugh a little bit too. Even Dean chuckles a little—mostly because Elena's laugh is infectious, but he still laughs.

After carefully covering the driver's seat in an ancient towel, they set off to find a motel.

Inside Dean slaps down his credit card.

"One room please," he says.

The old man at the desk picks up the card, glancing at the name and then up at the man covered in mud in front of him.

"You guys having a reunion or something?" he asks dryly.

Dean and Sam exchange a look, and Elena steps away from her place by the door, glancing over at Dean.

"What do you mean?" Sam asks.

"That other guy, Burt Aframian, he came in and bought out a room for the whole month," he tells his three eager listeners.

After the man hands over the keys to their room—two queen beds, and Sam doesn't even want to know how sleeping arrangements will work—the three of them head in the direction of 'Burt Aframian's' room.

Dean and Elena stand look out while Sam carefully works the lock over—lock picking another skill that comes back to Sam as naturally as riding a bike. When the lock clicks open, Sam steps inside the room. Once glance around has him grabbing Dean by his collar and dragging him in. Dean grabs Elena's hand just in time to drag her along with him, and Sam shuts the door behind her.

The three of them stare at the sight before them, and it takes Dean and Elena a moment to notice they are still holding hands. Elena lets go first.

The room is papered with photos, newspaper clippings, and pages upon pages of text. There's a salt circle on the floor and an old, half-eaten hamburger by the lamp.

"I don't think he's been here for a couple days at least," Dean says, speaking at last. Sam examines the salt circle, while Elena's attention is already on the papers pinned to the walls.

Sam points out all the safety precautions their father had set up.

"He was worried, trying to keep something from coming in," he theorizes.

Dean has joined Elena in her examination of the walls. They stand on opposite ends of the room, Sam heading over to Dean.

"What do you got here?" Sam asks.

"Centennial Highway victims," Dean replies. "I don't get it," he continues. "I mean, different men, different jobs, ages, ethnicities," Dean rambles, and Sam goes across to where Elena is standing to see what's on the wall in front of her.

"There's always a connection, right? What do these guys have in common?"

Sam looks towards the third wall, following the massive amounts of research his father had painstakingly gone through. Finally he sees the clue that makes everything make sense. In black marker: _woman in white._

"Dad figured it out," Sam says, admiration clear on his face. Elena has slipped up behind him, understanding dawning on her face. Dean turns to look at them.

"What do you mean?" Dean asks.

"He found the same article we did," Sam explains, gesturing to it.

"Constance Welch, she's a woman in white," Elena concludes.

Dean raises his eyebrow, glancing back at the wall of victims.

"You sly dogs," he accuses knowingly. "All right, so if we're dealing with a woman in white, Dad would've found the corpse and destroyed it," he continues, all business.

"She might have another weakness," Sam suggests.

Dean shakes his head.

"No, Dad would want to make sure. He'd dig her up," Dean insists. "Does it say where she's buried?" he questions, coming over to them.

"No, not that I can tell," Sam says.

Elena shakes her head.

"I haven't found anything," she says.

"If I were Dad, I'd go ask her husband, if he's still alive," Sam advises. Elena nods in agreement.

"All right, why don't you see if you can find an address?" Dean suggests. "I'm gonna go get cleaned up," he continues, heading towards the bathroom, eager to get the dried mud off of him.

Elena has already begun to look through the papers scattered around the room, her movements precise and well practiced.

"Hey Dean?" Sam calls after him. Dean turns back to look at his brother. "What I said earlier about Mom and Dad, I'm sorry," Sam apologizes.

Dean holds up a hand to cuts him off.

"No chick flick moments," Dean insists. "If you want a hug, ask Elena," he says.

Elena looks up from the stack of papers she'd been sorting through and gives him a withering stare, and Dean responds with a blinding grin.

Sam snorts.

"All right, jerk."

"Bitch."

Elena looks back down at her papers, shaking her head and smiling fondly at their antics. Dean heads towards the bathroom to get cleaned up.

Sam laughs a little, glancing over at Elena. He can see the curve of her smile as she looks through the papers. After a moment, her phone rings and she picks it up.

"Hey Jer," she answers, standing up to slip out the door.

Sam watches her go, wondering if 'Jer' is her littler brother she'd been visiting in college. It's such a normal thing to do—visit your little brother at college—but she obviously isn't a normal girl.

Dean had all but called her a hunter during their argument the night before, and yet Sam can't quite see it yet. She'd handled the ghost about as well as they had, and she's obviously great with people, but to Sam she still seemed like a nice young girl who should still be in college herself. He can't help but wonder what kind of horrors had brought her into this world.

Why did his father take her in?

In his musings, Sam had been wandering around the room, and he catches glimpse of an old photo of their father and Sam and Dean as kids, Sam can't help but smile a little bit at the memory.

While Elena's outside still on the phone, Sam decides to check his messages, seeing that he has one from Jessica, he listens to it. Feeling slightly guilty, be barely pays attention as Elena slips into the room and Dean heads out to find some food.

Elena also declines Dean's invitation for food; already back to her task of finding Joseph Welch's address.

Outside, there is a sheriff's vehicle, and Dean turns quickly, already dialing Elena's number.

"Yeah?" she answers.

"Gilbert, Five-O, you guys need to take off," he orders. Elena straightens, standing quickly to look over at Sam, who's attention is now solely on her.

"What about you?" she asks worriedly.

"Uh, they kinda spotted me," he admits. "Go find my dad," he orders, hanging up quickly and turning around to face the officers who'd walked up behind him while he was warning Elena and Sam.

"Problem, officers?" Dean questions innocently.

"Where's your partner?" one of them asks, and Dean thanks the heavens that he'd had Elena stay in the car.

"Partner? What—what partner?" Dean asks, playing dumb.

A quick exchange has one of the officers heading off to look for Sam while the other stays to question Dean.

Elena and Sam had been watching the exchange from behind the curtains of the motel room, but seeing the approaching officer, they quickly backed away to plot their escape.

"So, fake U.S. marshal, fake credit cards, you got anything that's real?" the officer questions sarcastically.

Dean opens his mouth, and like every other day of his life, spits out the first sarcastic thing that comes to mind, regardless of the consequences.

"My boobs," he deadpans, grinning like the idiot he is.

Needless to say, he gets cuffed. Still, Elena and Sam had gotten away, so at least there's that.

In the interrogation room, Dean plays it cool with practiced ease, frustrating the officers to no end.

"So, you wanna give us your real name?" the interrogating officer asks dryly.

"I told you, it's Nugent, Ted Nugent," Dean insists.

"I'm not sure you realize just how much trouble you're in here," the officer replies, placing a box full of evidence from John's motel room on the table.

"We talking misdemeanor kind of trouble, or uh, 'squeal like a pig' trouble?" Dean quips, still not taking any of it too seriously.

"You got the faces of ten missing persons taped to your wall," the officer counters. "Along with a whole lot of satanic mumbo jumbo. Boy, you are officially a suspect," the officer informs him.

Dean replies dryly, pointing out that he was too young to actually have committed the first one. He continues to appear relaxed and unconcerned throughout the interrogation until the officer calls him by his real name and slaps down his father's journal.

"I thought that might be your name," the officer says with satisfaction, seeing Dean's interest.

He flips through the book, amazed by the strange content, finally stopping on a page with Dean's name and some random numbers. Then he flips a couple more pages to show another message.

In his father's familiar handwriting, three more words that made Dean more worried than anything else had since he'd picked Elena up at the airport and she'd told him she hadn't heard from his dad in a week.

_Keep her safe._

The man flips back to the page with his name and the numbers

"Now, you're staying right here until you tell me exactly what the hell that means, and who in the hell 'she' is," the officer demands.

Dean takes a breath and looks up at the officer, ready to do what he does best, lie.

* * *

Elsewhere, Sam and Elena had found the address for Joseph Welch.

"You should go talk to him," Elena says. "I'll take care of Dean," she continues, giving him a sly grin.

Sam raises an eyebrow at her.

"How are you gonna do that?" he asks. She continues to grin.

"Sometimes it's a good thing to be memorable," she says with a shrug.

"Seriously, you go find out what we need to know about Constance, and I'll get your brother out," she says.

Sam nods, still wondering what she had planned.

"Okay," he agrees bemusedly.

She nods her head.

Good," she says simply. She pulls out a prepaid cellphone from her purse.

"Now, how are you at phony phone calls?"

* * *

"I told you, it's my locker combination," Dean insists once again, ignoring the officer's impatience.

When another officer came in to inform the interrogating officer of shots being fired on some road, Dean tries to keep his grin to himself.

Dean soon finds himself handcuffed to the table while the officer takes off to deal with the situation. Dean's just fingering a paperclip when he hears the sound of a man's voice and the distinct _tap. tap. tap._ of boots on the cement floor.

He doesn't hold back his grin at all as Elena comes strolling into the room, her hips swaying, clad in tiny jean shorts that show off her infamous legs. She grins back at him and casually pulls out a key ring from her back pocket.

"He didn't notice you stealing his keys?" Dean questions incredulously.

She shrugs. "He was focused on other things," she replies archly.

"God bless those shorts," Dean mutters as Elena perches on the thin arm of his chair. She gives him a reproachful look that is ruined by the grin on her face. He grins back at her, unrepentant. She grabs his hand, using the key to unlock the handcuffs from his wrists.

She's close enough that he can smell the familiar scent of her skin and her loose hair slips over her shoulder to brush against his neck and then she's moving away from him all too quickly.

He shakes it off, standing up to grab his dad's journal and head for the door. Catching sight of the journal, Elena grabs his wrist, stopping him.

"First of all, we can't go out that way," she points out. "They might not have noticed me waltzing in here, but they sure will notice you waltzing out," she reminds him and he gives a conceding nod.

"Second of all, where did you get that?" she asks, gesturing to the journal in his hands.

"Our friendly neighborhood officers found it in Dad's room," he tells her. He opens it to show her the page pertaining to her. "What exactly does he mean?" he asks.

She starts, looking up from the page like she's coming out of a trance. She shakes her head.

"Not here and not now," she says, he gives her an exasperated look. "Later," she promises. She puts the keys down on the table and gestures toward the window.

"Sam went to see Joseph Welch," she tells him. "We should get going."

Reluctantly, Dean nods, tucking away her promise for later, he puts the journal into his jacket, heading out the window first and turning around to carefully guide Elena through.

Together they make their way across the street. Elena leads Dean over to a beat up old pick-up truck. She slips into the front seat, tossing Dean her phone to call Sam.

"Why exactly did you pick this car?" Dean asks, and Elena opens the sun visor. The keys fall into her lap. "God you're good," he says, his voice full of awe.

"I watched the old man put them there five minutes before I went in to get you," she says with a shrug, starting the car.

While she drives, Dean calls Sam.

"Dad's gone, he left Jericho, I've got his journal," is all Dean has to say before Sam feels the world tilt on its axis.

"He doesn't go anywhere without that thing," Sam replies, feeling slightly dazed.

"He did this time," Dean replies simply.

"What's it say?" Sam requests.

"Same old ex-marine crap," Dean responds, glancing over at Elena. "And something about Elena," he adds.

"What exactly does it say?" Sam questions, his curiosity peaked.

"Coordinates, don't know where to yet though," Dean says. Sam shakes his head even though Dean can't see him.

"No, what did it say about Elena?" he clarifies. Dean glances over at Elena. She's intent on the road, guiding the old rust bucket along the road in the dark.

"'Keep her safe,'" Dean replies. "I don't know what it means yet, Elena hasn't told me," he continues. Elena barely flinches, focusing intently on the road ahead of her.

"I guess we've gotta figure out where those coordinates are located," Sam mutters, still more focused on the Elena part. What does Elena need to be kept safe from?

"Yeah," Dean agrees, his attention also on the girl beside him.

"Dean, what the hell is going on?" Sam finally bursts out, his curiosity over the mystery surrounding Elena and their disappearing father finally getting to him.

Suddenly there is a figure in the road, and Sam slams on the brakes before Dean has a chance to reply.

"Sam, Sam!" Dean calls through the phone.

Elena glances over at him worriedly.

In the backseat of the impala, Constance stares Sam down.

"Take me home," she orders. Sam just stares at her. "Take. Me. Home," she orders again, this time with more force.

"No," Sam replies flatly, his resolve firm. This only seems to enrage her.

Constance locks them in the car, using her ghostly powers to drive them to her house, Sam protesting all the while.

Dean can vaguely hear what's going on through Sam's abandoned phone, and tells Elena to head for the old Welch house. She obeys instantly, pushing the battered old truck well past its limits as they speed toward Sam and his ghostly captor.

At the old Welch house, Sam pleads with the flickering ghost in the backseat.

"Don't do this," he pleads, wondering if ghosts have any sense of right and wrong.

"I can never go home." She speaks as if he hadn't spoken at all, and the heartbreak is clear on her face—but there's another emotion on her face—fear.

"You're scared to go home," Sam says, realizing it even as he speaks.

When he turns around, she is gone, the next second she is beside him, crawling into his lap, desperate and angry.

"Hold me, I'm so cold," she begs, using all the right lines on the wrong guy.

"You can't kill me," Sam states matter of factly. "I'm not unfaithful, I've never been," he informs her.

But Constance doesn't seem to care, she is out for blood, and his is readily available.

"You will be," she whispers in his ear, forcing a kiss on him. Her lips are cold and he is unmoving, refusing to play along with her games.

She disappears just as suddenly as she had appeared. When she reappears again, her fingers are burning holes in his chest, and it's all a blur until Dean shoots a hole through his own car to put a salt round into her. Elena follows close behind him. Constance is determined to have her blood though, and continues to torture him. Sitting up, Sam turns the car on.

"I'm taking you home," Sam quips, driving Dean's precious impala right through the side of the house. Dean and Elena exchange a look, running in after him.

"Sam!" Dean yells.

"Here," Sam calls back.

Elena at his heels, Dean makes his way over to the car.

"Are you okay?" Elena asks. Sam grimaces.

"Can you move?" Dean asks.

"I think so," Sam replies. "Help me," he requests, and Dean reaches a hand in to help him out.

Elena's attention is on the ghost. Constance stares in wondrous terror at the ruin of her home. Smashed, on the floor before her is a family portrait. She picks it up, and the pain on her face is so familiar Elena loses her breath temporarily.

Dean hauls Sam out of the car and turns them to see what Elena is staring at. Constance finally turns her attention back to the three of them, her eyes locked on Elena once again. None of them move, barely breathing. It is a long time before Constance's attention turns over to the brothers. She slams the photograph down, sending a chest of drawers into their legs, effectively pinning the three of them to the side of the impala.

She moves closer, her attention on Dean.

"Take me home," she purrs, repeating her same old lines.

Dean's eyebrows shoot up, Sam and Elena exchange a confused glance.

"Oh sweetheart, I think you're mistaken, I don't have a girlfriend," Dean points out.

Constance arches one delicate eyebrow, glancing over at Elena pointedly and back at Dean with emphasis.

"Oh hell no, even the ghost thinks we're dating!" Dean exclaims, and even then—pinned to a car and seconds from a bloody death at the hands of a ghost, Elena can't help but giggle a little.

"Really?" Dean asks her incredulously.

She shrugs.

"It's still kinda funny," she admits.

"Psycho ghost lady thinks we're dating and wants to murder us, how is that funny?" he hisses back. She rolls her eyes.

"She tried to kill Sam even though he wouldn't take her home, she's clearly going off book, I don't think she cares much about the whole 'in a relationship' thing anymore," she retorts.

"Guys, now is not the time," Sam interrupts.

They return their attention to the angry ghost, but her attention has been stolen from them by the flickering lights that announce the arrival of her own ghosts. The water trickling down the stairs is the first hint.

Dean, Elena, and Sam try their best to stay perfectly still while Constance is confronted by her children that she birthed and murdered.

"You've come home to us, Mommy," they whisper as one and the their audience of three watches in horrified fascination as they embrace her, dragging her away screaming, for her punishment.

Once she's gone, the three of them heave the chest of drawers off of them.

"You okay, Gilbert?" Dean asks, glancing her over.

Elena waves him off.

"I'm fine," she insists. He doesn't look convinced.

"She was like fixated on you or something," he points out. Elena shrugs.

"I don't know why," she says honestly. She turns her attention to Sam.

"Are _you_ okay?" she asks him, obviously concerned about his injuries, he waves her off, already wondering how he's going to explain the five holes in his chest to Jessica.

Dean meanwhile, is examining his baby.

"He's fine," Dean replies. "But if you screwed up my car," Dean says, turning back to look at Sam. "I'll kill you."

Neither Elena nor Sam need to look at his face to know how serious he is.

Elena picks her way through the debris to get a good look at the puddle of water where the three ghosts had been. Following up behind her, Sam takes a good look at her face, and sees that she is pale and thoughtful.

"What's wrong?" he asks.

"She couldn't come home," she tells him. He nods.

"Because this is where she drowned her kids," he summarizes.

"She was too afraid to face them," Dean says, through with his examination of his car.

"She could never go home again," Elena says, and then she turns around, a frown on her face.

"I think she knew I can't go home either, that's why she kept staring at me," Elena tells them.

With that, she heads out the drive the borrowed pick up truck back to its previous spot, leaving them stunned.

"Why can't she go home?" Sam asks Dean.

Dean looks at him, his face open and honest.

"I have no idea," he admits. "All I know is, Dad told me to keep her safe."

Dean turns to get into the car and Sam follows him.

Once Elena has dropped off the old man's car and crawled into the backseat of the impala, they head off, eager to get away from Jericho as quickly as they can.

"Okay, here's where Dad went," Sam says. "It's called Black Water Ridge, Colorado," Sam informs Dean as he drives. Elena is passed out in the backseat.

"Sounds charming," Dean quips. "How far?"

"It's about six hundred miles," Sam responds.

Dean considers it.

"If we shag ass, we can make it by morning," he points out. Sam looks over at him; reluctant to burst his bubble, but determined to make it back in time for his interview.

"Dean, um," Sam starts.

"You're not going," Dean states, no question in his voice. Sam shakes his head.

"The interview's in like ten hours, I gotta be there," Sam insists.

"Yeah, yeah, whatever," Dean shakes it off. "I'll take you home," he says, clearly disappointed.

He glances in the rearview mirror to check on the sleeping Elena, as if to reassure himself she's still there—he isn't alone.

They drive the rest of the way back in silence.

Elena is still asleep when they roll up in front of Sam's building, so he doesn't get to say goodbye, and he finds himself strangely disappointed. Despite only knowing her for a couple of days, he likes her a lot, and already almost considers her a friend. He keeps it to himself, but he's glad Dean has her. Even the best hunters need someone to watch their back.

"Maybe I can meet up with you later, all right?" Sam suggests, wanting to help find their dad, and feeling bad for leaving it the task to Dean.

"Yeah, all right," Dean agrees but Sam can see it's insincere.

"Sam," Dean calls after his retreating figure. Sam turns back to see what he has to say. "You know, the three of us made a hell of a team back there," he says, glancing back at Elena's slumbering form. Her shoulder twitches in a way that's familiar and he can tell she's only moments away from waking up.

Sam smiles a little.

"Yeah," he agrees. Dean drives away and Sam heads into the building.

When he gets inside he sprawls out on the bed, letting out a content sigh.

Back in the impala Elena sits up and stretches, her body still heavy with sleep. In a move that Dean has harassed her about hundreds of times—surprisingly more for her safety than the car's—she climbs over the seat back and into the front seat beside Dean.

She buckles herself in.

"I told you not to do that," Dean scolds halfheartedly.

"You're barely coasting," she points out, her voice scratchy with sleep. He rolls his eyes fondly at her.

He is solemn and quiet in a way that gets under her skin and before she knows what she's doing she's opening her mouth.

"I get where he's coming from, you know," she tells him. Dean glances at her, his question written all over his face.

"I wouldn't have exactly picked this life for myself either," she tells him, her voice gentle.

He tries not to wince, but her admission still stings like a bitch. Before the smarting can set in, Elena opens her mouth again.

"At least the company's good though," she continues lightly, glancing at him from under her lashes.

He can't help but grin at that.

She sighs and leans over, her head on his shoulder, and she's about the close her eyes and succumb to sleep again when they stop at the corner to turn. A flickering of light catches her attention from out of the corner of her eye and she turns to see what it's from.

She sits up suddenly, her attention on the apartment building Sam had just walked into; flames flickering from one of the apartments.

"Dean," Elena says urgently, and he reacts as quickly as he was trained to, following her line of sight and then whipping the car around to get them back to the burning building his brother is in.

He's out of the car and across the lawn in a matter of seconds, ordering Elena to stay put even as he dashes inside after his brother.

With trembling hands, Elena dials 911. After the call is made, Elena stands in the middle of the lawn, cups her hands over her mouth and screams " _ **FIRE!**_ " at the top of her lungs.

When Dean comes bursting out onto the lawn dragging a struggling Sam with him, Elena lets out a shaking sigh of relief and runs over to help Dean wrangle his brother away from the building and toward the car.

Time passes strangely, people come streaming out of the building, emergency vehicles pull up with their screaming sirens, firemen rushing to contain and extinguish the fire.

Sam stops fight them and stares into space. Dean does a quick round, trying to find out if anyone knows what happened. Elena sits next to Sam, quietly offering him support, wisely keeping her mouth shut.

There is only one casualty of the fire, Jessica Moore.

When Dean reaches them, Elena is sitting in the open door of the backseat, and Sam is at the trunk. Dean touches Elena on the knee and she gives him a reassuring smile, he returns it, heading back toward his brother.

He looks at Sam, at a loss for words, and Sam looks back, something defiant in his eyes.

Sam sighs, looks down, and says, "We got work to do."


	2. 2 and a Half Years Earlier aka Graveyard of Dreams

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John and Dean meet Elena for the first time

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey look, it's chapter two! This is the first of two flashback chapters, so hopefully this will provide a little clarity (not too much though, the mystery is half the fun!), I know it's not nearly as long as the first one, but rest assured, the next one totally is (it might even be longer!). Enjoy!:)

There's something about Elena Gilbert in her mourning weeds that tugs at Dean's heartstrings. Maybe it's the delicate line of her collarbone jutting out from the sleeves of her black dress, so fragile, so easily broken. It could be the way her brother Jeremy hovers protectively close to her, like he's expecting someone to come and steal her—the last of his family—away from him. It's probably the look on her face that gets to him though—the grief and heartbreak sits so heavily on her face, aging her years within the span of a day, and yet she wears it like she knows the feeling all too well.

She's two months shy of her eighteenth birthday and today she's burying her aunt and uncle, only eleven months after burying her parents. She's known so much grief in such a short span of time for someone so young, and he can see how it weighs on her like a physical weight. She handles herself admirably well, all things considered, she could be far more of a mess than she is and Dean can't help but admire her for it.

He keeps his focus on her to ignore how awkward he feels at the funeral. He and his dad are strangers in the small group of mourners. His father was friends with the uncle—John Gilbert. Dean doesn't know much about the situation, just that John Gilbert was Elena's real father, but she was raised by his older brother Grayson and his wife Miranda alongside their biological son Jeremy.

A long time ago, John Winchester promised his friend John Gilbert that if it ever came to be that there was no one else left to do it, he would protect his daughter, Elena. He doesn't know what his dad is supposed to protect Elena from, but it's clear that she is in danger.

In Dean's experience, you don't end up with a graveyard full of dead family members in such a short period of time without some kind of supernatural interference.

His dad had received a call the night before, the conversation was brief and tense, and the next thing Dean knew they were driving to Virginia for the funeral of a man Dean had only met a handful of times.

Dean can't see anything of John Gilbert in his daughter, the man he remembers had light brown hair and blue eyes, where he was fair his daughter is dark, with deep brown eyes, long dark hair, and smooth olive skin. Elena Gilbert is a very pretty girl, behind the grief that has aged her beyond her scant years.

She's the only one who doesn't seem confused by John and Dean's presence, so he assumes her father—uncle—must have told her about them. The other funeral attendees regard them almost warily, and Dean is just as wary of them. It's a small group by all standards, only five of them besides the Gilbert siblings. There are two girls—a tall blonde and a petite black girl—who are obviously friends of Elena, and a boy about the same age as her, and two men, one who looks not much older than Dean himself, and one who looks at least thirty.

There's something about the boy, the younger man, and the tall blonde that set Dean on edge, but he wouldn't count the petite black girl out in a fight either. Still, he can't quite get a read on any of them—he just knows there's more to them than meets the eye. The middle aged man is the easiest to place, Dean doesn't know his name, has never met him before, but he'd bet big that the man is a hunter of some sort. Like recognizes like and all that.

Elena kneels down to place red roses on the graves—fresh and old alike. She stays there, and for a moment Dean wonders if she will be able to stand again. With remarkable strength, she stands, holding her spine punishingly straight, and Dean's admiration turns to awe.

In their line of business, grief is not uncommon, but Elena handles hers with a grace that Dean has never encountered before.

The group seems to be breaking up, the younger man is already halfway across the graveyard, with the boy following after him. The two girls and Jeremy stay huddled close to the man, and Elena turns to look at Dean and his father.

Taking his cue, John moves towards her, Dean trailing after. John holds his hand out for Elena, and she takes it.

"John Winchester, and this is my son Dean," he introduces himself.

When Elena turns to shake Dean's hand it's like she's looking through him.

"I was friends with your father—or should I say uncle?" John gives her a speculative look. She raises an eyebrow.

"John Winchester's friends with John Gilbert?" she replies dryly and Dean actively has to stop himself from laughing. His dad gives her a wry grin in response and she smiles without humor. "I know, he mentioned you, in a letter," she tells him.

"That's good, I was hoping he had, otherwise this was going to be pretty awkward," John says. She nods in agreement.

"Two strange men at an incredibly private funeral, nothing awkward about that," she deadpans, and Dean wonders if she's this funny because this is how she deals with her grief.

His dad doesn't quite know what to do with her dark humor, but Elena seems to intuitively know that, because she gives him an apologetic, grimacing smile.

"Sorry, that was the last one, I promise." She tucks her hair behind her ear, glancing over at the small group of people hovering just out of earshot. For a moment it seems like she and her brother are locked in some kind of silent communication, but then John touches her elbow gently and she turns back to them, breaking their eye contact.

"We should probably go somewhere else, we've got a lot to talk about," he tells her as gently as he can. She nods.

"Of course, we can talk back at the house," she agrees.

She waves over the rest of the group and they all leave the cemetery together, Elena tucked into her brother's side as close as she can get.

It's not far back to the Gilberts' house, Mystic Falls really is a small town. The house is big and white and the only thing that's missing is a white picket fence. It looks like a house straight out of a movie, cookie cutter family in a small town and all. Then Dean remembers that there is no cookie cutter family waiting inside, just two kids with more ghosts than they know what to do with, and he reins in the cynicism.

The two girls seem reluctant to leave Elena alone, so she ushers the Winchesters into her father's old study, away from the rest of the group who have taken up residence in the kitchen. His father had quietly indicated that he only wanted to talk to her—without Jeremy.

Without thinking, she takes the seat behind her father's desk, and the two Winchesters follow her lead and take the two chairs in front of it.

"Do you know why I'm here, Elena?" John asks.

He's leaned forward on his forearms, his expression as open and frank as John Winchester can get, and Dean is mildly surprised at the gentle tone he uses with her. It's kinder even than the one he uses with bereaved widows and terrified witnesses.

She nods uncertainly. She looks impossibly small sitting behind her father's desk, like a little girl playing make believe.

"He said—in his letter—that you're supposed to protect me," she says quietly, a hard look passes over her face and she continues, "But—it's too late. It's already done."

She says it so simply, like it's an irrefutable fact, and Dean wonders for the umpteenth time what exactly she needs protecting from. His dad has been suspiciously tight-lipped about the whole thing.

John doesn't look surprised at her revelation, instead he nods his head.

"I know," he tells her seriously, and Dean can't help but notice the hint of disapproval in his face and tone. "But you have to know, Elena, that wasn't the end," he continues ominously.

She seems to understand whatever he's implying, because her face goes pale.

"It might be done, but it's not over," he warns her. "As long as you are alive, it will never be over," he says grimly.

She swallows harshly, looking down at her hands. After a moment she nods her head, and when she looks back up at him, there is something resigned in her eyes, like an animal backed into a corner that knows there is nowhere left to run.

"I guess I did know that," she admits, her fingers tracing light patterns on the surface of her father's desk. The room is clean, no dust hanging around in the corners, but it's clear that it's unused.

Dean can't help but wonder about the rest of the house—how much of it is like this room. Free of cobwebs, but untouched, almost like a museum of all her ghosts.

"We can protect you," John tells her. Elena snorts.

"No one could before," she says quietly. "If it weren't for John—" she cuts herself off. She takes a breath to steady herself, and then meets John's gaze again.

"What can you do that they couldn't?" she asks. Her jaw clenches with the effort it takes to control her emotions.

"Your father—John—" his father clarifies quickly. "He made the appropriate arrangements for me to be your legal guardian in the event something happened to himself and Jenna." She winces at the sound of her aunt's name, her loss still an open wound. "I know you're almost eighteen," he continues. "But I think it's best for you if you come with us. You'll be safer, away from Mystic Falls."

Dean blinks, but quickly hides his shock, focusing his attention on Elena's reaction instead of asking all the questions he suddenly had for his father. For a long moment Elena simply stares at John, a frozen look of disbelief on her face.

At last she shudders and blinks, opening her mouth.

"Excuse me?" she asks, her voice high and too close to shrill for Dean's comfort.

John remains calm, clearly anticipating this particular reaction.

"It's what's best for you, Elena, you're too easy to find here," he tells her reasonably.

Elena though, is not having any of his reason.

"Mystic Falls is my home, I'm not leaving," she says flatly, glaring at him.

John looks at her for the first time like she is a little girl, and Dean knows instantly that it's a bad move.

"You're in danger Elena—you escaped with your life by the skin of your teeth because John made the ultimate sacrifice—"Elena cuts him off.

"I didn't ask him to do that," she spits harshly, her glare growing even fiercer. "I didn't ask anybody to die for me."

Not for the first time, Dean feels as if he is wildly out of his depth. He has no idea what kind of danger this girl is in, but now he has another piece of the puzzle, albeit a small one. People died for this girl in front of him—probably the ones just buried hours before. Jenna Sommers and John Gilbert.

"You never have to ask the people you love to make those kinds of sacrifices for you," John counters calmly. She glares at him, and to Dean's horror, tears start to spill down her cheeks, but she ignores them, getting to her feet.

"No one had to ask me to die for them either," she tells him, her voice quiet and controlled. Dean could very well be a lamp on the desk, for all either one seems to care for his presence. "But I was ready to do it. I didn't ask them because I'd already made up my mind."

She's seventeen and for whatever reason, she had decided to die. Now she's standing here on the other side of it, a bottomless well of grief and survivor's guilt. Dean can see that his father is pushing too hard and too fast, but he's helpless to stop him.

"I'm not leaving," Elena tells John, her voice full of finality. "This is my home, it's all I have left of them."

Her admission seems to remind her of her anger because suddenly she's full of fight again.

"I'm not leaving," she repeats, and then she walks out of the room.

"Well that went well," Dean mutters sarcastically. John gives him a sharp look and Dean clears his throat nervously. "I just think you were too hard on her," he appeals. "She's young, she's clearly gone through something horrible." Dean gives his father a pointed look, hoping for an explanation, but John just looks at him so he continues. "It just doesn't seem like ordering her around is the best approach." He shrugs.

John sits back down in his chair heavily.

"She doesn't have any other choice Dean," he tells him solemnly. "Her presence is a liability to everyone in this town, and as her guardian I can't just leave her on her own, she's still a minor."

Dean leans forward.

"Why is she a liability to everyone in this town?" he asks, unable to hold back his curiosity any longer.

His dad heaves a sigh and shakes his head.

"You're better off not knowing," he insists and Dean gives him a look. It's the kind of line they feed to bystanders all the time but his father holds firm on this one. "All you need to know is that someone very bad and very old was after her, and if—when they find out she lived, there will be dire consequences," he says grimly. "For her and for the people she cares about," he adds.

Dean frowns, unsatisfied with the small amount of information his father has given him.

"I promised him, I'd protect her," he reminds him. "I can't do that if she's a waiting target."

Dean sighs, but gets to his feet.

"All right," he says.

John raises an eyebrow.

"All right?" he questions.

"All right, I'll talk to her," Dean elaborates.

"Are you sure that's a good idea?" John questions dubiously.

"Well your method isn't exactly working," Dean points out.

Reluctantly, John concedes to his point.

"Just, behave, all right?" John orders him.

"Yes sir," Dean promises, following Elena out of the room. When he reaches the kitchen, the tall blonde silently points to the glass doors that lead out to the backyard. He can see Elena's black clad form, and with a nod of thanks to the blonde, he heads out into the backyard.

Her heels are abandoned by the door and she's seated on top of a picnic bench in the furthest corner of the yard, under a magnolia tree in full bloom. Her back is to him, so he tries to make as much noise as he can to avoid startling her.

He climbs up onto the table next of her, a respectable distance between them.

"Your dad's kind of an ass," she tells him, and he snorts a little in surprise.

"He means well," he insists, and she gives him a disbelieving look.

"Really? Because it kind of seems like he's just used to getting his way," she replies flatly.

Dean winces, unable to argue.

"He's just trying to keep his promise to your father," he reminded her gently.

"My uncle," she corrected him quickly. "He was always my uncle to me, no matter what's true," she told him.

Dean nods in understanding.

"Look I know he's not going about it in the right way, but my dad really is just trying to help. He knows you're in a lot of trouble and he's trying to keep his promise," Dean says, hoping to get her to at least see where his dad is coming from.

"I can't just leave, this is my home, those people inside? They might not be my blood, but they are my family," she replies softly. "I understand what your dad's trying to do, and I'm grateful, but what I need is to be here with the people who love me."

He gives a conceding nod; she does have a good point.

"I don't think I'm the one you should be saying this to," Dean tells her gently. She looks over at him. "You should try telling my dad what you just told me," he suggests.

"Yeah, but will he listen?" she asks.

He shrugs. "You can at least try, right?"

She cracks a small smile and nods her head.

"Try? sure I can do that," she agrees. A few tears slip down her face and Dean is reminded that today has been impossibly long for her—even before his dad demanded she leave her home and everyone she has left behind.

"Your dad kinda has sucky timing," Elena says, breaking the silence and Dean has to laugh at that.

"Yeah, I guess so," he agrees. "Today's probably not the day you want to deal with some strange guy demanding you leave your home."

She stifles a laugh that turns into a sob and reflexively she covers her face with her hands, sobbing into her palms.

Feeling uncomfortable, Dean wonders what he should do. He doesn't know her well enough to feel right comforting her, but listening to her muffled sobs is close to agonizing.

"Hey, you're gonna get through this, you know?" he says and it seems to be the right thing to say, because her sobs turn to hiccups and soon she is wiping the tears from her face.

"Sorry, I didn't mean to cry all over you," she apologizes ruefully. Dean shakes his head.

"No apologies necessary, you just went through hell," he tells her firmly. "I get it, believe me, I do," he assures her, thinking of his mom.

She nods her head seriously.

"I know you do," she says. He raises an eyebrow.

"You do?" he questions, bemused. She nods again, giving him a small, sad smile.

"You don't look at me like someone who doesn't understand what I'm going through," she tells him. "None of the cloying sympathy—or the fear of becoming like me," she adds quietly. "You look at me like you understand exactly what I'm going through."

And this time when she looks at him she isn't looking through him, she's looking _into_ him, like she knows all his secrets and all his pain and understands. It's startling, from someone so young.

"Yeah," he agrees softly. "I guess I do know where you're coming from," he says ruefully.

"Well if you're still standing, I guess you must be right," she replies. "I will get through this."

She looks tired and uncertain, but he finds he has enough conviction for both of them.

"Yeah, you will," he tells her with certainty.

She smiles at him, and this time there is nothing weak in her smile—there is still sadness, but it's strong and true, and he grins back at her.

"Thank you, for listening and talking to me," she thanks him. "I think I'm ready to talk to your dad now."

He waves her off. "Any time," he replies. "Although I've got to warn you, it's gonna take a lot to convince my dad to let you stay here, it's hard to change his mind once he's got it all made up about something," he cautions her.

She climbs off the picnic table, turning to stand in front of him.

"Oh believe me, It's not easy to change my mind either," she assures him, and with that, she heads back into the house, gathering her shoes from their place by the door as she walks in.

Dean lets out a small chuckle, shaking his head in wonder. His dad is going to have his hands full with her, beneath the grief that's stuck to her skin like tar; it's obvious she's quite the firecracker.

Steeling himself for the coming battle, he climbs off the picnic bench as well and follows her inside.

* * *

Elena faces down John Winchester with all the defiance she's used before against older—and scarier—opponents.

"I'm not leaving," she tells him flatly, and John feels his impatience flair yet again.

If it were any other situation, he wouldn't be able to help but admire her spirit—but in this case, he needs her to see sense and understand that he's only trying to help.

"You're a seventeen-year-old kid, you can't just expect me to leave you here on your own," he argues, his last line of defense

They've been arguing for something close to an hour, and she's neatly torn down every defense—pointing out that if the monsters wanted her, they would find her no matter where she is.

"I'm not going to put my life on hold for that," she told him firmly.

She's especially determined not to be parted from her little brother, even though John had promised to make arrangements for him.

"I'm not leaving my brother, or my friends, or my school, Mystic Falls is my home, I'm not leaving," she repeats like a mantra.

In the end, the only thing John has to cling to is his constant reminder that he is her legal guardian—for two more months, but it's the closest he has to an ace in the hole. Until her birthday in June, he's responsible for her.

"I don't care," she tells him flatly. "I'm too old to be led around by nose by someone I barely know," she spits. "I'm not leaving, I'd say you'd have to drag me out of here kicking and screaming but that's not even an option because I am not leaving Mystic Falls. My home and the people here are the only things I have left, and I'm not going to leave them, no matter what."

John feels more exhausted arguing with her than doing battle with a five hundred year old ghost or tracking werewolves on a full moon. All of Sam's teenage defiance couldn't have prepared him for the impossible task of dealing with an irate Elena Gilbert. Having made up her mind to stay in Mystic Falls, nothing John can say will change her mind.

"I'm your guardian, and I say you have to come with me," he orders her.

She crosses her arms over her chest, staring him down. "No," she replies simply.

They've been in her father's old study this whole time, everyone else having long since abandoned ship—Dean had stepped out in search of something to eat and asylum away from the arguing duo. In his opinion, John Winchester arguing with Elena Gilbert is the ultimate meeting between an unstoppable force and an immovable object.

"Elena, you staying here is practically a death sentence, what do you think he'll do to you if he finds out you lived?" he tries, appealing to any sense of self-preservation she might have.

"I understand that," she says calmly. "But I'm not going to live my life on the run, that's not the kind of life I want for myself, I've seen what running can do to a person—how twisted it can make them, and I won't do it, I won't do that to myself," she swears.

"Your father entrusted me with your safety, how am I supposed to protect you if you won't let me?" he demands. "You need to be kept safe, John knew that, and he made me swear that if worse came to worst, I would keep you safe when he was no longer able to."

She shakes her head. "John, he didn't know me well enough to know what I need," she argues softly. "What I need, is to be here, in my home, with the people that I love," she insists. "They can keep me safe just as well as you can."

John snorts at her declaration.

"Your monsters? Are you sure keeping you safe is what they really want?" he questions, and the derision is clear in his voice.

Elena glares at him.

"I can see that you share the opinions of my uncle, but yes, my monsters are far more suited to keep me safe than you are," she replies stiffly, her anger palpable.

"You can't trust them," he tells her, shaking his head.

"They've never hurt me, they've proven time and time again that they would gladly lay down their lives for mine," she shoots back flatly. "I'm not going to let some ignorant old guy tell me who I should be friends with, you don't have any say in that."

On and on it goes, arguing in circle to the point where John is almost ready to throw in the towel and leave her to her fate. It's only the legal matter that stops him, he is her guardian, and he can't just leave her there. Finally, a soft knock comes at the door, halting Elena and John's argument. Alaric Saltzman steps into the room.

"I couldn't help but overhear your argument," he begins—and Elena flushes pink, she's the one who raised her voice first, after all. "And I think I have a solution that will satisfy everyone."

John raises an eyebrow. "By all means, tell us," he invites, gesturing Alaric into the empty chair Dean had vacated earlier.

Alaric sits down, glancing over at Elena nervously.

"I hope I'm not overstepping my boundaries or anything," he begins, before diving right into his solution, "But it seems like the main problem is that you are Elena's guardian until she turns eighteen in two months," he summarizes handily. "Since you clearly have no intention of staying here until then, and Elena absolutely will not leave." he glances over at Elena who nods her head decisively. "The best solution is to find someone else to be her—and Jeremy's—temporary guardian until Elena turns eighteen at the end of June," he proposes.

Both Elena and John stare at him for a moment. He sighs.

"Let me be clear with my intentions here, I'm offering to be Elena and Jeremy's guardian until Elena's eighteenth birthday," he says clearly.

"You'd do that for us?" Elena asks, her voice feathery soft.

Alaric turns to look at her, his face softening.

"Of course, Elena," he assures her. "I can see how much it means to you to stay here in your home with Jeremy and all your friends, and I would do anything to ensure that you can," he promises.

Elena gives him a wobbly smile. "Thank you," she says throatily, her emotions getting the better of her.

"Of course," he says again.

Both of them turn back to John who is studying Alaric intently.

"Can I trust you with her safety?" John asks him seriously. "I swore to her father that I would protect her, and I didn't make that promise lightly," he informs Alaric gruffly.

Alaric nods solemnly.

"Yes of course, Elena's safety is incredibly important to me," he assures him.

John sighs. "Well I guess we'll have to stick around for the paperwork."

For the first time, John is greeted with the sight of Elena's blinding grin.

* * *

When the paperwork is done and over with—aided along by their vampire friends—the Winchesters get ready to leave, but only after John extracts a promise from both Alaric and Elena to keep him informed of the going-ons around Mystic Falls, especially pertaining to Elena and her monsters—both friend and foe.

"I mean it, I want to be kept up to date completely," John insists, and when both Alaric and Elena swear they will only one of them lying.

Satisfied that at least Alaric will follow through with his duties, John makes his way to the car. Before they go, Elena stands on her tiptoes and gives Dean a chaste kiss to the cheek, whispering her thanks yet again for comforting her while she cried.

He grins sheepishly at her.

"Hey any time, Gilbert," he promises. She raises an eyebrow.

"I might just take you up on that," she tells him.

He grins and they say their goodbyes. The Winchesters drive away, John hoping that nothing will bring him back to this place ever again, but knowing that sooner or later, the monsters will catch up with that stubborn little girl again.

It only takes them six months before they find themselves back in Mystic Falls, another tragedy weighing down Elena's shoulders.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title is from Graveyard by The Devil Makes Three.


	3. Wendigo aka Into The Trees With Empty Hands

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> lol I bet ya'll thought I died.

Nightmares are not uncommon in Sam Winchester's life. Knowing about the existence of monsters since he was a small child certainly hadn't helped the matter. But recently, they've become the ruling factor. Bed or car—it doesn't matter where he sleeps, the nightmares always haunt him.

More often than not, they're about her. A nuclear cocktail of guilt and terror and grief, mixing together, showing him all the things he fears.

He stops sleeping—he dozes, loses consciousness for short stretches of time, forcing himself to wake up before he can head into the menacing REM cycle. But he can only stay awake for so long before basic human need for sleep takes over.

This time, he's passed out in the front seat—a hand is reaching out of Jessica's grave to grab him—and a hand thumps him in the shoulder, he jumps up, his head colliding painfully with the impala's roof. He hears Elena's muffled apology—slipped out between guilty giggles—and the sound of the music blaring from the radio before he even opens his eyes.

"I'm so sorry," Elena apologizes again, her voice bubbling with laughter, but still sincere. "It looked like you were having a nightmare, I was just trying to wake you up," she explains.

"It's okay," he says ruefully. "Thanks," he continues awkwardly.

She nods, giving him a sympathetic, understanding smile. He's gotten used to her—but they're still not quite comfortable with each other.

Dean glances over from the driver's seat, a smile hanging from the left side of his mouth, and Sam can tell he wants to laugh but is holding it off with the best of him.

"You okay?" Dean asks, and Sam can hear the double meaning in his words yet again. It's been like that since that night—everything Dean says has another meaning, Dean is asking about the head he just smashed into the roof of his car, and about the nightmare he'd so abruptly been pulled from.

"Yeah, I'm fine," Sam lies. Deny, deny, deny—that's the name of the game.

Dean can't let it go, though.

"Another nightmare?" he asks, since Sam hadn't actually confirmed or denied it when Elena explained her reasoning for waking him up.

Sam just clears his throat, uncomfortable.

Dean considers him for a second, and then—

"You wanna drive?"

Sam starts to chuckle in disbelief, wondering if the world's gone topsy-turvy.

"You never let me drive!" Elena says protests from the backseat.

"How many car accidents have you been in?" Dean asks meaningfully.

"I was only driving during one of them," she defends and he shakes his head.

"Yeah but you've got bad luck when it comes to cars, sorry, 'Lena, I'm not risking my baby," he says with finality. Elena pouts and slumps over in the backseat, a map clutched in her hand. He looks back over at Sam. "Offers still open for you though," he tells him.

Sam stares in disbelief.

"Dean, your whole life, you never once asked me that," Sam reminds him.

"Just thought you might want to, never mind," Dean says, looking slightly uncomfortable.

Sam rolls his eyes, seeing right through him.

"Look, man, you're worried about me, I get it," Sam begins, glancing back at Elena in the rearview mirror. She's abandoned her pouting pose, instead she's looking at him, her face perfectly still, but the empathy is almost overpowering and he has to look away. "Thank you, but I'm perfectly okay," Sam insists, mentally reminding himself not to look at Elena as much—he can still feel the urge to spill his guts to her occasionally and it's disconcerting to say the least.

"Mm-hmm," Dean replies, the disbelief clear on his face.

Fed up, Sam rolls his eyes and sticks his hand over into the backseat, waving it until Elena gets the message and hands over the map. They take turns playing navigator, and it'd been Elena's turn last.

"All right, where are we?" Sam asks, ready to move on from the subject and focus on something else.

"We are just outside Grand Junction," Dean says, beating Elena to it. She crosses her eyes at him in the rearview mirror and he grins back at her.

Sam finds his attention wondering back to his nightmares—and the mystery back in California. Without meaning to, he finds himself switching back to the topic that only moments before he'd been desperate to get away from.

"You know what? Maybe we shouldn't have left Stanford so soon," he says, wavering on the decision yet again.

"Sam, we dug around there for a week, we came up with nothing," Dean says tiredly, reciting the same old arguments.

"He's right, Sam," Elena pipes up from the backseat. "There wasn't anything else we could do there."

"If you want to find the thing that killed Jessica," Dean continues, and Sam cuts him off.

"We gotta find Dad first," he finishes, knowing all the lines by heart at this point.

"Dad disappearing and this thing showing up again after twenty years?" Dean barrels on. "It's no coincidence. Dad'll have answers, he'll know what to do," Dean insists with complete faith.

Elena makes a tiny noise in her throat, not quite a disagreement but definitely not one of agreement. Her relationship with John Winchester has always been a rocky one, so Dean is used to her doubt in him at this point, and ignores it.

"It's weird, man," Sam says, frowning a little. "These coordinates he left us, this Black Water Ridge..."

"Yeah, what about it?" Dean asks.

"There's nothing there," Sam says, his face puzzled. "It's just woods."

He glances back at Elena, a quick darting glance, and then over to Dean.

"Why is he sending us to the middle of nowhere?" he asks.

Neither of them have an answer.

Sam forges on, "And the other message?" he asks, glancing back at Elena, who looks away for the first time, staring out the window. "Why was it so important that he had to write it down?" he asks, still looking at her.

Since the night of the fire, no one has brought up the second message – _keep her safe_ – and Sam finds himself bursting with curiosity.

Dean glances back at Elena in the rearview mirror.

"How 'bout it, Elena, feel like sharing?" he invites her. She purses her lips together, and Sam can practically see their silent conversation. Clearly this is a denial because Dean shakes his head. "I can't protect you if I don't know what I'm supposed to be protecting you against, now can I?" he points out, hoping that she'll finally give him something—anything—more than what he already knows.

Which really isn't much in the first place.

"I don't know why he wrote that," she bursts out, agitated. "Look, you're both better off not knowing," she insists. "The only thing you have to do to keep me safe is keep driving," she says flatly.

Dean and Sam exchange a confused look.

"'Keep driving', that's it? That's all you're gonna give me?" Dean asks in disbelief.

Elena nods firmly.

"Yup," is her only reply.

Dean's hands clench tighter around the steering wheel, and Sam can practically hear his teeth grinding together.

"Okay," he grits out, clearly frustrated.

For a long time, they sit in silence, until finally Sam remembers an exchange between the other two earlier.

"How many car accidents _have_ you been in?" he asks Elena.

Her response is immediate.

"Three, if you don't count the time a ghost set the car on fire with me in the front seat."

Dean and Sam exchange another look, and Dean looks mildly horrified so Sam assumes he didn't know about the ghost setting her car on fire one.

"That totally counts," Dean insists and Sam nods his head fervently.

"Yup, it counts," he agrees.

Elena shrugs.

"Four, then."

* * *

Inside the ranger station at the Lost Creek National Forest, Sam examines maps of the infamous Black Water Ridge, while Dean marvels over the size of a bear with such awe that Elena can't help but giggle in a way that makes Dean nudge her in the calf with his boot reproachfully. She sticks her tongue out at him and Sam ponders for possibly the hundredth time since they showed up on his doorstep over a week ago if they're aware of how they appear to an outsider.

"You folks aren't planning to go out near Black Water Ridge, are ya?" a grizzled old ranger questions, eyeing Elena in her jeans and stylish boots like the idea of her trooping through a forest personally offends him.

The three of them exchange a look.

"Oh no sir, we're environmental study majors from U.C. Boulder, just working on a paper" Sam lies easily.

Elena and Dean smile and nod along like they this isn't the first they've heard of it.

"Recycle man," Dean adds and Elena, having the grace and control to not crack even smile, nods very seriously.

"Bull," the ranger says flatly, instantly seeing through Sam's quickly thrown together story. "You're friends with that Haley girl, right?" he assumes, eyeing Elena in particular again.

Another quick exchange of glances and the three of them are nodding.

"What gave us away?" Elena asks, sounding convincingly sheepish.

Dean follows suit quickly, the two of them as in sync as ever.

"Yes," Dean agrees. "Yes we are, Ranger…" Dean looks at his shirt to find his name. "Wilkinson."

The ranger shakes his head. "Well I will tell you exactly what I told her," he says. "Her brother filled out a backcountry permit saying he wouldn't be back from Black Water until the twenty-fourth. So it's not exactly a missing persons, now is it?" the man asks, unknowingly giving them their first lead.

"No I guess not," Elena agrees. "Haley just has a tendency to worry," she says, sounding very much like she does know this Haley girl and how much she worries.

The ranger gives her an understanding smile.

"I'm sure her brother is just fine, she's worrying over nothing," he reassures her.

"I'm sure you're right," Elena agrees but Sam knows from the look on Dean's face that she's lying.

"Well that Haley girl's quite a pistol, huh?" Dean adds as the ranger walks away. Sam glances over at his brother, wondering what he's up to.

The ranger turns back with a look of complete weariness on his face.

"That is putting it mildly," he says with conviction.

"Actually, you know what would help is if I could show her a copy of that backcountry permit," Dean suggests. "You know, so she could see her brother's return date."

Elena nods from beside him like it's the perfect way to get this Haley to stop bugging the ranger.

"He's right, it would definitely help if she could see physical proof," she chimes in, smiling sweetly.

Sam can tell that their ploy has worked just from the look on Ranger Wilkinson's face.

He waits until they're outside to question why.

"What, are you cruising for a hookup or something?" Sam asks Dean, glancing warily at Elena. She doesn't look upset by the suggestion, but Dean is looking at him blankly.

"What do you mean?" he questions, sounding confused.

Sam can't help but feel indignant.

"The coordinates point to Black Water Ridge," Sam reminds him, knowing that Elena is paying attention too. "So what are we waiting for? Let's just go find Dad," Sam insists, his impatience getting the better of him.

"I mean, why even talk to this girl?" Sam bursts out, feeling frustrated.

He's running on very little sleep and the only thing fueling him along is his anger and the thought that their father might have all the answers they need to find the thing that had murdered both his mother and his girlfriend.

"I don't know, maybe we should know what we're walking into before we actually walk into it," Dean points out, for once being the sensible one of the two. Dean gives his brother a searching look, a frown on his face.

"What?" Sam asks defensively.

He feels three seconds from exploding, a feeling he's been having a lot lately, so he doesn't look over at Elena, who is, as ever, standing by his brother. He doesn't have to look at her to know there is understanding on her face. If Sam has learned anything about her in the week and a half that he's known her, it's that Elena always understands.

"Since when are you all 'shoot first, ask questions later', anyway?" Dean asks him, clearly concerned.

Sam stares back at him.

"Since now," he replies bluntly, getting in the car before he can ask any more questions.

"Oh really?" Dean asks to the empty air in front of him, exchanging a telling look with Elena before they both get in the car.

* * *

The backcountry permit gives them an address, and since Sam is still stewing in the front seat, Elena guides them to the Collins' residence.

At the front door, Dean takes point, since Sam is a reluctant participant at best.

"You must be Haley Collins," Dean begins. "I'm Dean, this is Sam and Elena," he says, indicating to the two of them.

Elena flashes the wary looking girl a reassuring smile, and Haley can't help but return it, albeit weakly.

"We're rangers with the park service, Ranger Wilkinson sent us over," Dean continues.

When Haley gives Elena a doubtful look, Elena chimes in briefly, "I'm a cadet, this is part of my training," she says cheerfully, and Haley looks slightly appeased, but not by much.

"We wanted to ask you some questions about your brother, Tommy," Dean continues.

Haley considers the three of them.

"Let me see some I.D.," she insists.

Dean plays it off well, showing her like it's the most natural thing in the world.

"Come on in," she says after a moment, opening the screen door and allowing the three of them in.

"Thank you," Elena says, ever aware of good manners.

"You're welcome," Haley replies distractedly, catching a glimpse of the impala over her shoulder. "That yours?" She directs the question to Dean, and the pride is evident on his face when he smiles.

"Yeah," Dean says with immodesty.

"Nice car," she says simply.

Elena gives Dean a look—it's nothing more than a flick of her eyebrow, but it seems to communicate legions of information because Dean's returning it with one of his own and it's all so teasing and light that Sam can almost believe that there really isn't anything going on between them—almost.

While they're following Haley in, Elena behind her, Dean next, and Sam at the rear, Dean turns back to mouth 'oh my god,' his face clearly indicating that he finds Haley attractive and it's almost like he didn't just have an entire silent conversation in a matter of seconds with the girl in front of him.

Except of course, inside, Dean and Elena are doing more of their silent communication. Sam decides to take initiative, figuring that the sooner they question Haley the sooner they can get out of there and go find his dad.

"So if Tommy's not due back for a while, how do you know something's wrong?" Sam asks, eager to get it over with.

"He checks in every day by cell," she answers, bringing out food for the teenage boy sitting at the table.

The boy had blushed and looked away when Elena entered the room and is now giving his food all of his attention. This apparently isn't an uncommon reaction to Elena because Dean good-naturedly rolls his eyes.

"He emails photos, stupid little videos, but we haven't heard anything in over three days now," Haley continues.

"Well maybe he can't get cell reception," Sam suggests sensibly. Haley shakes her head.

"He's got a satellite phone too," she informs them, dismissing the idea instantly.

"Could it be he's just having fun and forgot to check in?" Dean says, trying to get a read on the situation.

"He wouldn't do that," the teenage boy insists, speaking to them for the first time.

"Our parents are gone, it's just my two brothers and me," Haley explains.

Elena's face goes soft with empathy in a way that she can't help.

"We all keep pretty close tabs on each other."

Dean and Elena nod in understanding. Sam frowns in consideration.

"Can I see the pictures he sent you?" he asks.

Haley nods. "Yeah."

She leads them over to her laptop. On the computer screen there are pictures of a smiling brown-haired youth, she clicks over to a video and shows them the content.

"Hey Haley," the video starts, and while it seems like nothing is amiss, Sam narrows his eyes at the video.

"Well, we'll find your brother, we're heading out to Black Water Ridge tomorrow, first thing," Dean assures her, but Haley just gives him a challenging look.

"Then maybe I'll see you there," she replies, moving to stand by her brother.

"You're going to look for him," Elena states, not asking, understanding dawning.

"Look, I can't sit around here anymore, so I hired a guide. I'm heading out in the morning, and I'm gonna find Tommy myself," she tells them, and although she is addressing all three of them, her focus is on Elena.

Elena nods a little, clearly understanding her point of view.

"I think I know how you feel," Dean says, clearly on the same wavelength as Elena.

"Hey, you mind forwarding these to me?" Sam requests, still mulling over the contents of the video she'd shown them.

"Sure," Haley agrees readily enough.

* * *

"So, Black Water Ridge doesn't get a lot of traffic, local campers mostly—" Sam starts, pulling out his laptop.

The three of them are in a local dive bar, Elena attracting more than her fair share of attention, as usual, but she seems oblivious to them all. Dean, on the other hand, is not, and shoots off more than a few glares to keep interested parties away from her, and their table.

"But still, this past April, two hikers went missing out there, they were never found," Sam continues.

"Any before that?" Dean asks. A scruffy looking guy starts towards their table, a brave look on his face, and with a roll of his eyes, Dean hooks an ankle around one of the legs of Elena's chair, dragging her closer to him. The scruffy guy veers away from them quickly, Elena completely oblivious to his aborted attempt to talk to her.

When she gives Dean a bemused look, he shoots her an innocent one of his own. "You were too far away to see," he says. She shakes her head at him fondly.

"Were there any more missing campers before that?" Elena asks Sam, trying to get them back on track.

He nods. "Yeah, in 1982, eight different people all vanished within the same year. Authorities said it was a grizzly attack. And again in 1959, and _again,_ before that in 1936—every 23 years, like clockwork."

Sam opens his laptop, the last video Tommy sent already open on the screen.

"Okay, watch this, here's the clincher. I downloaded that guy Tommy's video to the laptop, check this out," he says, clicking through part of the video frame by frame.

Elena cocks her head to the side, curious.

"Do it again," Dean requests. Sam obliges. In the background, outside of Tommy's tent, a large shadow passes across the screen.

"That's three frames, it's a fraction of a second," Sam says. "Whatever that thing is, it can move."

Dean whacks Sam on the arm, startling him.

"I told you something weird was going on," he says.

Elena flicks him in the shoulder.

"Violence isn't necessary," she scolds him; he shoots her a disbelieving look.

"You're one to talk," he retorts. Ever since he moved her chair closer to his, the other bar patrons seemed to have gotten the message, although they still look occasionally, no one else has tried to approach Elena. Dean's mood has dramatically improved as a direct result.

Sam rolls his eyes at their antics, continuing on with his impromptu presentation.

"I got one more thing," he says, handing over a piece of paper to Elena instead of Dean, to indicate his displeasure at being whacked so unceremoniously by his brother. "In '59, one camper survived the supposed grizzly attack. Just a kid, barely crawled out of the woods alive."

Peering over Elena's shoulder at the paper, Dean nods his head.

"Is there a name?" he asks.

Sam smiles.

* * *

They find their survivor in a dark, shoddy old apartment building, and at first he's eager to get rid of them—even Elena—but between the three of them, eventually Mr. Shaw reluctantly opens up about his experience that awful night. His reluctance stems from the usual source—constant disbelief. No one has ever believed him before, so he doesn't see why the three of them would.

"How can you know what we'll believe if you won't tell us what you saw?" Elena asks, gently urging him to tell them.

"Mr. Shaw, what did you see?" Sam asks, his tone as gentle as Elena's.

"Nothing," Mr. Shaw admits at last. "It moved too fast to see. It hid too well," he explains. "I heard it, though. A roar, like no man or animal I ever heard."

"It came at night?" Sam prompts, and Shaw nods fervently. "Got inside your tent?"

"It got inside our _cabin_ ," Mr. Shaw corrects. "I was sleeping in front of the fireplace when it came in. It didn't smash a window or break the door—it unlocked it," he says flatly. "Do you know of a bear that could do something like that?" he demands. "I didn't even wake up until I heard my parents screaming," he continues.

Sam glances sideways at Elena, and her face is full of gut-wrenching empathy.

"It killed them?" Sam asks, focusing back on Mr. Shaw, on anyone but Elena.

"Dragged 'em off into the night," Shaw confirms. "Why it left me alive; I've been asking myself that ever since." He pauses to catch his breath and gulp down his grief. "It did leave me this, though," he says, and then he pulls down the collar of his shirt to reveal a massive claw mark scar that spanned the width of his shoulder and stopped just short of his chest.

"There's something evil in those woods. It was some sort of a demon," he says with conviction, and then goes silent. The silence stretches between the four of them.

"I'm so sorry," Elena says at last. Mr. Shaw looks at her, startled. "You were so young, and you went through something terrible, and you lost people you love, and I'm sorry," she says by way of explanation.

Mr. Shaw gives her an incredulous smile, and then looks over at Sam and Dean.

"If all your cadets are that sincere," he begins, nodding his head over at Elena, "You might actually have the makings of a good park service," he finishes.

Dean nods in agreement. "Oh she's definitely the top of her class," he says amiably.

With that, the three of them say their goodbyes and leave Mr. Shaw. In the hallway, Elena bumps her shoulder into Dean's teasingly and he grins at her good-naturedly.

"You handled that well," Dean says and she shrugs.

"It wasn't so bad," she says softly, and Sam wonders how he's out of the loop this time.

"So it didn't sound like a demon to me?" Elena forges on, switching topics back to the case before Sam discovers their previous topic. Dean nods his head.

"Spirits and demons don't have to unlock doors if they want inside, they just go through the walls," Dean says as they walk down the dark hallway.

"So it's probably something else—something corporeal," Sam concludes.

"'Corporeal'?" Dean questions. "Excuse me, Professor," he says mockingly. Elena's walking behind him and accidentally-on-purpose kicks him in the ankle, which causes him to shoot her an affronted look over his shoulder.

Sam rolls his eyes. "Shut up, so what do you think?"

Dean shrugs. "The claws, the speed that it moves—it could be a Skinwalker, maybe a Black Dog," he suggests. "Whatever we're talking about, we're talking about a creature, and it's _corporeal_ , which means we can kill it."

Sam stops short as Dean's slight, rolling his eyes back into his head so hard that it hurts. Elena and Dean keep walking, and Sam remembers their brief exchange outside of Shaw's door.

Something about what Shaw had told them had affected Elena personally, and whatever it is, Dean knows something about it, and thought Elena handled it well. Sam recalls the gut-wrenching empathy on her face when Shaw told them that he hadn't woken up until he heard his parents' screams, and concludes that maybe it isn't something he wants to know about.

He follows them out into the dark parking lot. Elena's leaned against the side of the impala while Dean opens the trunk, propping it open with a shotgun. He starts packing a duffle full of weapons, methodically adding whatever he thinks might be useful.

Sam can't help but think about Haley and her single-minded determination to find her brother.

"We cannot let that Haley girl go out there," he says. Elena gives him a skeptical look.

"Oh yeah? What are we gonna tell her? That she can't go into the woods because of a big scary monster?" Dean asks. Sam looks at him.

"Yeah," he says simply. The more civilians out there in the woods with them, the longer it will take. Sam just wants to get this over with and be done so they can find their dad and get down to the real business: finding the thing that killed their mom and Jess.

"Her brother's missing, Sam," Elena says, her tone gentle but rebuking.

"She's not just gonna sit this out," Dean says, continuing for her. "Now we go with her, we protect her, and we keep our eyes peeled for our fuzzy predator."

Elena nods in agreement.

Having finished packing the duffle, Dean hoists it out of the trunk.

"Finding Dad's not enough?" Sam asks, impatience welling up inside of him, and he slams the hidden compartment shut, and then he slams the trunk for good measure too. "Now we gotta babysit too?"

Dean turns to look at him, disbelief evident on his face.

"What?" Sam asks defensively.

"Nothing," Dean replies, shaking his head. He throws the duffle at Sam, who catches it reflexively. Dean walks away, towards the front of the car.

"Isn't this what we do?" Elena asks quietly, "We save people, when did that become babysitting?" she asks rhetorically, and then she withdraws too, leaving Sam feeling more ashamed than Dean's non-confrontation.

After a moment he follows them into the car. In the car, Elena's hanging over the front seat, looking at Dean expectantly.

"Why do we have to go to the general store?" he asks.

"We're going out into the woods for an indeterminate amount of time, we need supplies," she says like it's the most obvious thing in the world.

* * *

Sam figures out why Elena picked the general store pretty quickly; it's the closest store around that's still open.

The brothers trail after her into the store, but Elena is all business, she picks up a basket and gets to work. Bottled water, non-perishable foods, bug spray, a first aid kid, basically anything that you might need whilst traipsing through the woods.

"Do we really need all that?" Dean asks, trailing behind her, bemused. She looks back at him.

"Yes," she says flatly.

"We need bug spray?" he questions. She nods gravely.

"If you want to be eaten alive by tiny creepy crawlies, be my guest," she says sweetly.

Sam huffs out a laugh, but nods in agreement.

"Well look at you, little miss Girl Scout," Dean says fondly. She looks back at him again.

"I've been friends with Caroline 'Be Prepared' Forbes since I was six, something was bound to rub off on me," she replies with a shrug.

Dean laughs appreciatively.

"You guys should probably pick out some food too, you know," Elena points out.

Sam nods in agreement and wanders off to look at the store's selection of energy bars. When he finds Elena again, Dean has dumped a bag of peanut M&Ms into the basket.

"Just so you know, I have no plans on helping you carry any of this, Gilbert," Dean says casually. "'Cept the M&Ms of course." He grins at her.

She rolls her eyes. "I didn't ask you to," she replies.

Sam adds his items to the basket, and then holds his hands out, offering to take the almost overflowing basket from her. She gives it to him gratefully.

"I'll help you carry it, Elena," Sam says. She smiles at him.

"Thank you, Sam," she says, sticking her tongue out at Dean, who retaliates. Smiling and shaking her head, she wanders off to see if there's anything else in the store they might need.

"God, you're such a suck-up," Dean says once she's out of earshot, shaking his head.

"Shut up, she's like half my size, I'd feel bad if I let her carry everything," Sam says, shrugging his shoulders.

"We're not going to be out there that long, Sammy, she's just over-preparing," Dean says, his tone fond and exasperated.

"Maybe she's right to over-prepare," Sam replies.

"Whatever, just don't expect me to help you guys lug this around all day," Dean says dismissively.

"I wouldn't dream of it," Sam says.

* * *

Haley is arguing with their guide about whether or not Ben should go with them when the impala pulls up. Dean, Sam, and Elena emerge one by one, and she regards them warily.

Dean smiles charmingly. "You guys got room for three more?"

Haley blinks. "Wait, you want to come with us?"

"Wait, who are these guys?" Roy asks from behind her.

Haley turns back to answer him.

"Apparently this is all the park service could muster up for the search and rescue," she replies. "No offense, Elena," she adds. "But you are just a cadet."

Elena shrugs good-naturedly. "None taken," she says.

"You're rangers?" Roy asks, surveying Elena speculatively.

Her hair in twin braids, dressed in jean shorts, old chuck taylors and a flannel shirt she "borrowed" from Dean, she's by far the most appropriately dressed for a hike of the three latecomers.

"That's right," Dean says.

Sam hands Elena her backpack and she smiles her thanks at him as she slips on the straps, absentmindedly swatting her braids out of the way. Sam nods back and continues on towards where the trail starts, eager to get this over and done with.

Haley, on the other hand, is more speculative of Dean's apparel than Elena's.

"And you're hiking out in biker boos and jeans?" She raises an eyebrow at him.

He looks at her shorts pointedly.

"Oh sweetheart, I don't do shorts."

Elena moves forward to stand next him.

"She looks better in them than I do," he adds, tugging at one of her braids affectionately.

Elena rolls her eyes at him in amusement.

Haley's eyebrow raises a little higher, they didn't act like he was training her for anything.

Roy, decidedly not charmed by Dean's snark, decides to put his two cents in again.

"Oh, you think this is funny? It's dangerous backcountry out there, her brother might be hurt," he says, canting his head towards Haley.

Cutting in smoothly, Elena heads off whatever alpha male pissing contest was about to start.

"We know that, we're just here to help," she assures him. "We all want to make sure that Haley's brother comes home safely."

Roy looks her up and down speculatively again.

"I'm not sure you do, little girl," he says.

Elena's face does not change, but Dean's does, and for a second, Haley wonders if it was a bad idea to hire Roy. The ranger clearly doesn't like his cadet being talked down to like that.

"She's not a little girl," Dean says, one octave away from calm. "And believe me, we know how dangerous it can be. We just want to help them find their brother, that's all, so I'd appreciate if you didn't talk to my cadet like that."

The smile he gives the other man is a mocking imitation of the action.

It's enough for Roy to back off for now, and he doesn't reply.

* * *

Walking through the woods isn't something Elena's enjoyed much since her eventful junior year of high school, but it's definitely preferable to follow a path in broad daylight as opposed to running (and stumbling) through the underbrush in the pitch-black night. She follows after Dean, who's just behind Roy, with the Collins siblings behind her and Sam bringing up the rear.

As expected, they don't make it very far before Dean decides to strike up a conversation with Roy for his own amusement.

"So, Roy, you said you did a little hunting?" he asks.

"Yeah, more than a little," Roy answers arrogantly.

Dean tosses Elena a sardonic grin over his shoulder and she rolls her eyes at him.

"Uh-huh," Dean says, not even trying to keep the derision out of his voice. "What kind of furry critters do you hunt?"

"Mostly buck, sometimes bear," Roy answers, but this time he's not paying much attention to Dean, focusing instead on their surroundings.

Elena's keeping her eyes on feet because Converse really aren't the most appropriate hiking shoes—but they were best she could do on such short notice—and if she steps into a puddle she's screwed. She notices the glint of metal before it fully registers in her mind. Dean takes another step closer to it.

"Tell me, uh, Bambi or Yogi ever hunt you back?"

Roy doesn't notice it until a couple of seconds after she does, so by the time he does she's already grabbed a fistful of Dean's jacket and hauled him back towards her, throwing her other arm around him to steady them so his superior weight and height doesn't knock them both over.

Dean looks back at her with a question in his eyes but she's doesn't reply, just nods towards where he was about to put his foot down. Roy grabs a stick and slams it down in the area and a bear trap instantly snaps up, breaking it.

"Good eyes, Cadet," Roy says gruffly. "You should watch where you're stepping, Ranger," he adds, addressing Dean.

Dean rolls his eyes in response.

Elena releases Dean, and he looks down at her, giving her a smile and a nod that she returns, once again communicating in their silent, easy way.

It occurs to Sam, that as often as Dean touches Elena, she hardly ever touches him, pulling him out of the way of a bear trap might be the first time he's noticed her initiating contact in the week and a half since he's been with them. He can't imagine the significance of that fact, so instead of pondering it over, he simply files it away with the rest of their weirdness and keeps following the group.

Elena falls back until she's next to Sam and offers him a water bottle. He takes it gratefully.

"Thanks," he says. She nods at him but doesn't speak, content to walk in silence.

Meanwhile, Haley walks faster until she's right behind Dean, agitation clear in her every move.

"You didn't pack any provisions," she starts in on him. "You guys are carrying a duffle bag."

"And a backpack," Dean says defensively. "Elena's pack isn't full of hair care products," he points out. "Her hair actually just naturally looks like that, it's kind of annoying truthfully, you'd think there would be a single second in the day where she doesn't look perfect, but nope."

He stops abruptly, realizing he's ranting a bit.

"You let her carry all of your provisions?" she questions, refusing to let him get her off topic and trying not to think about the gallon of anti-frizz spray and hairspray she used just this morning.

"She likes carrying them," Dean says casually.

Haley doesn't let that deter her. "You're not rangers, so who the hell are you?" she demands, pulling him back to face her.

Dean looks questioningly over her head at Sam and Elena, who are passing behind her, and they both nod their agreement.

"Sam and I are brothers," Dean starts. "And we're looking for our father, he might be here, we don't know. I just figured that you and me, we're in the same boat."

Haley inhales, focuses on the information he left out.

"Elena's your girlfriend?" she asks, trying to determine where she fits into the narrative.

Dean laughs.

"Sorry, she usually does that when people ask us that, I wanted to try it at least once," he explains when Haley gives him a sharp look. "She's a family friend, my dad took her in when her dad died," he says, giving her the abridged version.

Haley nods.

"Why didn't you just tell me that you're looking for your father from the start?" she asks.

"I'm telling you now," Dean says. "Besides," he adds, "it's probably the most honest I've ever been with a woman…ever."

She rolls her eyes and gestures behind him to where the rest of the group had gone.

"What about Elena?" she asks.

"That's different," he says dismissively.

"Why?" she asks, folding her arms expectantly.

Dean sighs. "Because more often than not, my life depends on being honest with her, we depend on each other, you can't lie to the people you depend on."

Haley wonders briefly what exactly he means by his life depending on his honesty with the other girl, but seeing that this is the most she's currently going to get out of him, she lets it slide.

"So, we okay?" Dean asks.

"Yeah, okay," Haley says after a moment.

She gives him a look. "Elena was definitely the most believable ranger out of the three of you," she tells him.

Dean laughs appreciatively but nods in agreement.

"Yeah, well, she's very competent," he admits easily.

Haley arches an eyebrow at him.

"Yeah, very dependable," she replies, stressing the last word, and he laughs again.

"Those provisions are hers, aren't they," she infers easily. "You didn't actually pack any of your own."

He gives her a look of his own. "What do you mean, I didn't pack any of my own?" and with that he pulls a pack of peanut m&ms out of his pocket before he starts to walk away.

She snorts. "I bet she made you pick something out to bring with you," she says knowingly.

He looks back at her, giving her a shameless grin in reply.

She shakes her head and follows after him.

* * *

Once they catch up to the group Elena tosses Dean a water bottle with no comment, and Haley almost wants to laugh again, there's something so refreshingly competent—like Dean said—about the other woman, that Haley can't help but like her, and she suspects that most people feel that way about her for one reason or another.

Even Roy seems to have warmed up to her alone out of the three tagalongs, his respect for her stemming from her attention to detail and her quick actions in saving her companion from stepping on the bear trap.

They hike for a few hours more before Roy slows down, calling back to them, "this is it, Black Water Ridge." He comes to a stop, allowing the others to catch up.

"What coordinates are we at," Sam asks as he passes him.

Roy pulls out his GPS, peering down at the screen before answering, "thirty-five and minus one-eleven."

Everyone else comes to rest near Roy, but Dean and Elena follow Sam until they're just past the group, on the verge of an expanse of woods that is deadly silent.

"You hear that?" Dean asks.

"Yeah," Sam replies, and Elena nods in tandem.

"Not even crickets."

Dean gazes around with a critical eye.

Roy puts his GPS away.

"I'm gonna go take a look around," he says to the group at large.

Dean turns back towards him and the rest of the group, while Elena keeps her eyes on the woods ahead.

Sam glances back at him. "You shouldn't go off by yourself," he says flatly, turning his attention back to the woods, wondering how someone who prides himself on being such a wonderful guide fails to notice the dead silence that envelopes them.

Roy chuckles. "That's sweet," he says mockingly. "Don't worry about me." He raises his shotgun subtly.

"You should listen to him," Elena says softly, but Roy, already walking away, doesn't hear her.

Dean and Sam exchange a look over her head, and then turn back to the Collins'.

"All right, everybody stays together," Dean says, taking charge without hesitation. "Let's go."

He heads in the direction Roy went, intent on keeping him in his sightline.

* * *

Despite his pace, Roy quickly disappears from view, and Dean is reluctant to leave the group behind, so he doesn't speed off in attempt to find him, trusting that Roy can indeed take care of himself—as long as the sun is still in the sky.

The group lingers at a fallen tree, taking in the sights around them.

"Haley, over here," Roy calls from out of view. There is an undercurrent of urgency in his voice that sets her at a running pace and the rest of them follow her.

They come into a clearing where the ravaged remains of a campsite stand.

"Oh my god," she says, unable to hide the anxiety in her voice.

They take in the camp, the bloodstains on the tattered tent.

"Looks like a grizzly," Roy says, having arrived at that conclusion in the time it had taken the group to catch up to him.

The group fans out, taking in the wreckage individually, Dean, Sam, and Elena all looking for signs that the damage was caused by something of the supernatural persuasion.

"Tommy?" Haley says, unable to believe what the evidence – the blood – suggested. Unbuckling her pack, she drops it to the ground, saying his name again, louder this time, as she moves forward, her movements frantic now that she's released from the burden of her pack.

"Tommy!"

Sam moves through the group, having dropped the duffle bag in order to follow after her quickly.

"Shhh! Shhh!" he attempts to quiet her, in case she attracts the wrong kind of attention.

"Why?" she asks, looking over at him standing by her side.

Sam keeps his eyes on the forest in front of them.

"Something might still be out there," he says.

"Sam," Dean's voice rings out, calling him away from the group.

He sees the red and gray fabric of Elena's backpack and climbs over a tree to where she stands behind a crouching Dean.

"The bodies were dragged from the campsite," Dean says in an undertone. "But here, the tracks just vanish. It's weird"

Dean rises, Sammy following his movements, his eyes still on the track marks that vanish, just like he said.

"I tell you what," Dean says, looking at Sam. "It's no Skinwalker or Black Dog."

He turns completely to leave, Elena having stood silently all this time, she looks at Sam, who looks back down at the tracks. When Elena turns to follow Dean, Sam follows after her.

* * *

Elena finds Haley holding her brother's mangled phone, blood on its cracked screen. She sniffles, trying very hard not to cry. Elena crouches down beside her.

"He could still be alive," Elena says softly, and Haley looks over at her. "Don't give up hope," she adds.

Haley looks at Elena, the fake cadet almost ethereally pretty despite waking up at the crack of dawn and hiking for most of the day, and is torn between absolutely gut-wrenching panic and grief, and the tentative hope that Elena offers her.

Before she can reply, or decide one way or the other, they hear a man cry for help in the distance.

In an instance, Roy takes off, shotgun at the ready, Dean pulls out his handgun and follows after him as Elena rises and pivots, chasing after Dean with remarkable speed despite the fact that she's still wearing her backpack, leaving Sam, Haley, and Ben to follow after them. Sam quickly catches up to Roy, but Elena, Haley and Dean aren't much further behind, Haley skidding into the clearing only seconds after Sam and Roy.

The clearing is empty, and the cries for help have ceased, leaving only the ominous silence that has resonated throughout this stretch of woods.

"It seemed like it was coming from around here, didn't it?" Haley says, looking around frantically, searching for a clue as to where the pleading man might be.

The silence stretches on.

"Everybody back to camp," Sam says, an ominous feeling brewing in his gut.

Sam sets his pace at a jog, hurrying back towards the empty camp.

"Our packs!" Haley cries, the aforementioned packs nowhere in sight.

"So much for my GPS and my satellite phone," Roy says wryly.

He turns back to Elena, the only one still carrying a pack.

"I don't suppose you have either of those in your pack?" he asks.

"Those were in the duffle," she says, lying easily.

"Of course," he replies dryly.

"What the hell is going on?" Haley asks, wondering why anyone would lure them away to steal their supplies.

"It's smart, it wants to cut us off so we can't call for help," Sam says, looking over at Dean.

"You mean someone," Roy corrects, "Some nut job out there just stole our gear."

Sam ignores his correction, moving over to where Dean and Elena are, glancing back at the bewildered group.

"I need to speak with you both, in private" he says.

Without a word, they both follow him away from the group to a small clearing out of sight and earshot of the rest of the group.

"Okay, let me see Dad's journal," Sam says, turning to Dean.

Dean pulls it out of his coat pocket, handing it over.

Sam opens it, immediately scanning through the pages for the one he's looking for, finding it quickly.

"All right, check that out," he says, handing over the journal to Dean, Elena looking at it from Dean's elbow.

Dean immediately shakes his head.

"Oh, come on, wendigos are in the Minnesota woods, or Northern Michigan," Dean reminds him. "I've never even heard of one this far west," he adds for good measure.

Elena is silent, remembering when John had gone over wendigos in the course of training her.

Sam looks down.

"Think about it Dean, the claws, the way it can mimic a human voice," he points out evenly.

Dean looks away, unable to deny to the evidence. "Great," he says flatly. "Well, then this is useless," he adds, raising his gun up.

Sam doesn't reply, simply presses the journal into Dean's chest until he grabs it, already heading back to camp. He turns back abruptly.

"We gotta get these people to safety," he says seriously. He marches back to camp, a plan forming in his mind.

Elena and Dean trail after him.

"You remember what those are?" Dean asks.

His dad had covered most of the monster stuff with her, Dean had taken on the more physical aspect of training Elena when it was clear that John had little patience for the smart-mouthed then teen. John could recite the history and identification process of all the monsters in his notebook to Elena while she rode shotgun with him, and for the most part she'd keep her mouth shut and absorb information at a rate that was almost faster than Sam's, but when it came to weaponry and combat Elena couldn't keep her mouth shut and John couldn't be patient with her.

The combination of the two of them together only served to egg the other on, and needless to say, Dean had handled that part of her training, much less averse to her smart mouth than his father.

Elena nods. "Yeah, the cannibals, right?" she says.

Dean nods somewhat grimly.

"The cannibals," he agrees.

Sam marches back into camp.

"All right, listen up, it's time to go," he announces briskly. "Things have gotten…" he trails off, "more complicated," he settles on. Elena and Dean follow up behind him.

"What?" Haley asks, looking between the three of them.

"Kid, don't worry about it, whatever's out there, I think I can handle it," Roy says assuredly.

"It's not me I'm worried about," Sam says dismissively. "If you shoot this thing you're just gonna make it mad," he says, he looks back at Dean and Elena. "We have to leave, now."

Roy, disliking Sam's dismissive tone, argues back.

"One, you're talking nonsense," he starts, "two, you're in no position to give anybody orders," he says, riled at Sam's presumptions.

"Relax," Dean says, cutting him off before he can continue, allowing Sam to jump in.

"We never should've let you come out here in the first place, I'm trying to protect you," Sam says.

Roy takes great offense to that. "You protect me?" he asks incredulously. "I was hunting these woods when your mommy was still kissing you goodnight," he says, getting up into Sam's face, hackled by the fact that a younger man would dare to presume to protect him.

"Yeah?" Sam asks. "It's a damn near perfect hunter." He pauses. "It's smarter than you, and it's gonna hunt you down and eat you alive, unless we get your stupid, sorry ass out of here."

Roy starts to laugh, incredulous and dismissive.

"You know you're crazy, right?" he asks rhetorically.

Sam shakes his head

"Yeah? You ever hunt a we-" Elena moves towards them quickly, cutting Sam off.

"This isn't helping anyone, calm down," she says, looking at Sam warningly, knowing that Roy won't take him seriously no matter what he says.

Dean pushes Sam away from the other man. "Chill out," he says in an undertone.

"Stop it, everyone just stop," Haley demands. They all look at her.

"Look, Tommy might still be alive, and I'm not leaving without him," she says with determination.

Dean looks at her, and then over at his brother and Elena.

"It's getting late," Dean says by way of reply. "This thing is a good hunter in the day, but an unbelievable hunter at night. We'll never beat it – not in the dark," he says, taking Elena's backpack from her without a word, "We need to settle in and protect ourselves." He heads back towards the campsite.

"How?" Haley questions.

* * *

After Dean carves the Anasazi symbols into the loose dirt, explaining what they were for to Haley and the rest of them, he sits down next to Elena and accepts the cold can of cheese ravioli from her. They'd both discovered that they prefer it cold one night when they couldn't find anything to put them in that was microwavable. He gives her a knowing grin, thinking about all nights they'd sat on the floors of motel rooms eating like champions and talking about nothing.

He groans in appreciation at his first bite. Elena giggles and raises her plastic fork to him.

"To being prepared," she says.

"To none microwavable plastic," he adds, clinking his plastic fork against hers.

"God bless Caroline Forbes," he says. She nods in agreement.

They sit in compatible silence, completely unware of the fact that most of their exchange had been incomprehensible to the rest of the group. They're so used to operating in their own little world, barely extending beyond the two of them to John on occasion and now Sam, that it doesn't occur to them that they might as well be speaking another language with all of their unfinished sentences and inside jokes.

Dean finishes his can off, taking the water bottle that Elena offers him, absentmindedly brushing his fingers against one of her braids appreciatively as he stands to go over to where his brother sits, brooding away from the fire.

He sits down beside him, starting without preamble. "You wanna tell me what's going on in that freaky head of yours?"

Sam waves his hand, his wrist still resting on his knee. "Dean," he starts, but he cuts him off quickly.

"No, you're not fine," Dean says. "You're like a powder keg, man. That's not like you." He hesitates, throws in a joke to ease the tension. "I'm supposed to be the belligerent one, remember?"

Sam doesn't look at him, just stares at the same patch of moss on the ground that he's been staring at since he sat down. Knowing that Dean won't leave him alone until he gives him an answer, Sam gives in.

"Dad's not here," he says, voicing what they—Elena included—have known all day now. "I mean, that much we know for sure, right? He would've left us a message, a sign, right?" Sam speaks, barely suppressing the resentment in his voice.

"Yeah, you're probably right," Dean says. "To tell you the truth, I don't think Dad's ever been to Lost Creek," he admits, turning to look at Dean.

Sam looks back over his shoulder at his brother, he turns away abruptly, his impatience getting better of him.

"Then let's get these people back to town, and let's hit the road, go find Dad," he says, frustration leaking further into his tone.

Dean looks back at the group, Haley and Elena quietly conversing, Elena smiling in that slight, calm way she did when she enjoyed the conversation, her eyes searching past Haley to Dean and Sam, and everything surrounding them past the glow of the campfire.

She'd been wary when she left home, always looking over her shoulder, and she's only grown warier since, but time, and training, had made her subtler about it. Eyes always seeking out the next threat, while still being perfectly engaged with whatever is right in front of her.

Sometimes Dean can't tell if he's made her better, with all of his training, passed down from his father, or if she's worse, ruining whatever of the child was left in her when they met at her uncle-father and aunt's funeral.

He remembers this, by the time they came back for her, the child in her was already gone. Like his father did to him and his brother, they honed her, refined her edges, life had already broken her into sharp thing.

"I mean, why are we still even here?" Sammy asks him, so Dean turns away from Elena's ever-seeking gaze.

Dean sighs, gets up, pulling their dad's journal out of his pocket as he sits in front of his brother. He puts his hand on top of the journal, presenting it to Sam.

"This is why, this book," Dean says simply. "This is Dad's single most valuable possession. Everything he knows about every evil thing is in here," Dean reminds him. "And he's passed it onto us. I think he wants us to pick up where he left off—you know, saving people, hunting things, the family business."

Sam shakes his head, not liking where Dean's going with this. He works his jaw for a second, then shakes his head again.

"That makes no sense," Sam says. "Why, why doesn't he just call us? Why doesn't he tell us what he wants, tell us where he is?" Sam asks, trying to make sense of their father's disappearing act and radio silence.

"He did tell us one thing," Dean reminds him, looking over to the campfire.

Sam follows his line of sight to the girl who has remained half a mystery since his brother showed up with her in tow over a week ago.

"We still don't know what we're protecting her from," Sam says, all of the unanswered questions setting his teeth on edge.

Dean doesn't take his eyes off of Elena and Sam wonders if he knows how he looks at her, even know when he knows she's keeping secrets, it's—too close to soft for Sam to feel comfortable with, and he has to look away, back to her, so he can stop feeling like he's invading his brother's privacy just by watching him watch her.

"If Elena says that keeping her safe means that we keep moving, then, for now, we have to believe her," Dean says, after a moment of contemplation. It's a role reversal, Dean with his thoughtful answers, and Sam with his belligerence.

"Do you really think that?" Sam asks, wondering why his brother so easily stepped back from questioning Elena on this topic.

Dean sighs heavily. "I don't know, but we've got nothing else to work with, we just have to hope that she clues us in to what's going on, sooner rather than later."

Dean finally tears his eyes away from Elena to look back at his brother.

"It's not like she's bad company, or a nuisance," he reasons, and it only takes Sam a second to realize that his brother is sousing him out, trying to figure out if he resents being stuck with Elena like he resents being out in the woods with two civilians and an idiot with a gun.

It's clear that Dean cares about Elena a lot, maybe more than he's even willing to admit to himself, and Sam feels almost guilty for ever letting him think that he might not want her around.

"Elena's great, Dean, it's impossible not to like her," Sam says, almost reassuring him. "I just want to know what's going on here."

Dean nods in agreement. "I understand, I've wanted that too for the past two years, Dad never seemed all that intent on telling me though," he admits. "Elena doesn't talk about it at all."

They lapse into silence.

"I don't know what's going on here, Sammy, with Dad or with Elena," Dean admits after a moment. "But the way I see it, Dad's given us a job to do, and I intend to do it."

It's there in his tone, that bullheaded loyalty that Dean has, has always had, to their father, and it's too much for Sam in his conflict, he can't follow on blindly, no answers in sight.

Sam shakes his head. "Dean, no," he says firmly. "I gotta find Dad, I gotta find Jessica's killer," he pauses, fighting for control of the onslaught of emotions that phrase brings up. "It's the only thing I can think about."

Dean nods a little, understanding of the overwhelming grief his brother is feeling. "Okay, all right," he agrees, acknowledging the genuine need behind his statement. "Sam, we'll find them, I promise."

Sam looks at him, unable to shake the comfort that comes from being reassured by someone who has looked after him his whole life.

"Listen to me," Dean starts, winding up for some hard truths. "You've gotta prepare yourself. I mean, this search could take a while. And all that anger? You can't keep it burning over the long haul, it's gonna kill you," Dean says, trying to make Sam understand the gravity of his insistence on stewing in his rage. "You gotta have patience, man."

Sam shakes his head. "How do you do it?" he questions, wondering how Dean, his volatile brother, seems to be handling their Dad's disappearance and radio silence, as well as Elena's refusal to explain anything about her situation to Dean, her partner.

"How does Dad do it?" Sam asks after a moment, wondering how their father had lived with this feeling for twenty-two years when Sam felt like he couldn't live with it for another two seconds.

Dean pauses before answering.

"Well for one, them. I mean, I figure our family's so screwed to hell, maybe we can help some others, it makes things a little more bearable."

Sam watches the two Collins siblings, huddling together, close to the fire, for warmth and for comfort.

Sam wants to ask Dean how bearable Elena makes his life, thinking that even if he could only bring himself to admit that she's his friend, at least he has that, a friend to keep him company, but he doesn't think he'll get a good answer. So instead, he waits for whatever other wisdom his brother has hidden up his sleeve.

"And I'll tell you what else helps," Dean says, pulling Sam's attention back over to him. "Killing as many evil sons of bitches as I possibly can." He adds a little smile at the end and it's by far the most Dean thing he's said since he sat down, and that more than anything is comforting to Sam, enough to make him smile, however briefly.

"Help me," a voice calls from far off into the dark.

Everyone stands to attention immediately, Dean pulling his gun despite knowing it's of no use against a wendigo.

The pleading continues on.

"It's trying to draw us out, stay cool, stay put," Dean reminds everyone.

"Inside the magic circle," Roy says derisively.

"Yes, inside the magic motherfucking circle," Elena says, startling everyone except Dean, who simply grins at her foul-mouthed reply.

Roy looks taken aback, but Elena simply gives him a look of pure steel and Sam finds even less of a reason to doubt her aptitude as a hunter.

The pleading continues, accompanied by a low, menacing growl.

"Okay, that's no grizzly," Roy finally admits.

Haley leads her brother back to the fire, sitting him down beside her. "It's okay, you'll be okay, I promise," she reassures him.

Leaves rustle, circling them.

"It's here," Roy says, and no one misses the anticipation in his voice. He takes a shot at an approximation of where the rustling is coming from, but it's moving too fast to be caught that easily. Undeterred, his fires again and again, and eventually the wendigo emits an agitated noise that suggests contact. "I hit it," he says, already heading outside of the circle.

"Roy, no!" Dean yells after him, trying to stop him from making a fatal mistake. Roy!" Dean yells again, but he doesn't stop. Dean turns back, "Don't move!" he says, pointing back at the terrified siblings, and then he takes off after Roy, Elena and Sam at his heels.

Roy is dead before they can catch up to him.

* * *

Sam sits against a tree stump holding his dad's journal, having eaten a couple of granola bars for breakfast under Elena's careful eye. Absentmindedly he plays with the rosary his Dad used as a bookmark, thinking over what his brother had said the night before.

In camp, Haley tries to make sense of what they had seen and heard the night before. Elena sits cross-legged nearby, re-braiding her hair, despite the rather annoying fact that the slightly mussed looked she'd woken up with had looked perfectly charming on her.

"I don't…" Haley starts, trailing off, trying to find words to express her racing thoughts. "I mean, these types of things—" she tries again, "they aren't supposed to be real." She looks back at Dean.

"I wish I could tell you different," he says, only half of his attention on her.

"How do we know it's not out there watching us?" she asks, appropriately paranoid after the night they'd had.

"The birds," Elena answers. "The birds, the crickets, all that life out there in the woods, when it's near, it stops, it's silent."

Haley considers this. "It was quiet, yesterday?" she says, half questioningly.

Elena nods.

"Dead quiet," Dean says.

Haley shakes her head. "I didn't even think…" she trails off, horrified at her own ignorance.

"You had no reason to," Elena says gently. "You didn't know."

Haley nods faintly. "I didn't know anything." The horror in her statement lost on no one.

Recognizing that Haley could easily start panicking, Dean speaks up.

"We're safe for now, the circle still stands," he says.

Haley looks at him curiously. "How do you know about this stuff?" she asks.

"It kind of runs in the family," Dean says.

Haley looks over at Elena expectantly.

Elena shrugs. "It runs in my family too."

Dean snorts. "Yeah, for a hell of a lot longer."

Haley looks taken aback. "How long?" she asks, genuinely curious about this subculture that she never could've imagined actually existed.

"Uh, since the Civil War, about," Elena says, tying off her second braid, once again perfect looking despite sleeping sitting up, propped back to back with Dean when it was Sam's turn to be on watch.

Sam walks back into camp, greeting everyone with a hurried, "hey," before launching into his plan and cutting off any more questions that Haley might've asked Dean or Elena. "So, we've got half a chance in the daylight, and I, for one, want to kill this evil son of a bitch," he says, echoing his brother's words from the night before.

"Well, hell, you know I'm in," Dean says.

Elena simply points at Dean, her sentiment about them being a package deal left unvoiced, but clearly heard by everyone. When it comes to hunting, Dean and Elena are perfectly synchronized.

Haley and Ben exchange a glance, outnumbered and out of their depth, but desperate to get their brother back – or avenge him if necessary.

Sam opens the journal to the page about wendigos, explaining what exactly they are and how they are created to the ignorant Collins siblings, secure that his dad would've taken Elena through the index backwards and forwards before he ever let her anywhere near a hunt.

Dean and Sam explain how wendigos are born through cannibalism and Elena makes vague disgusted faces to attempt some sort of levity on behalf of both Ben and Haley. All attempts at levity cease when Dean gets to the part where he explains why Tommy could possibly still be alive, wendigos being known to kidnap hikers and hunters and keep them for periods of hibernation.

Having picked through the leftover supplies, Dean had found just what was needed to kill the wendigo.

"Basically, we gotta torch the sucker."

* * *

They walk through the woods, following the claw marks on trees until they realize that once again, the wendigo is playing with them, filling an entire clearing with claw marked trees.

"They were almost too easy to follow," Sam concludes grimly, and then the growling and the hissing and the intimidation starts. From every corner of the forest, all around, surrounding them completely.

Roy's body falls from a tree, Elena dragging Haley out of the way to prevent her from being hit by it, and then they all run again.

Ben trips and falls and Sam and Elena both pause to haul him to his feet and urge him on.

Up ahead, Haley screams.

By the time they reach the place where Haley had screamed, she and Dean are gone, Dean's makeshift Molotov cocktail smashed to bits on the ground.

* * *

"If it keeps its victims alive, why would it kill Roy?" Ben asks Sam, the usually reticent boy finding his voice in the terror of the thought of losing not just his brother but his sister too.

Ben had always been naturally quiet, inheriting none of Tommy's easy charisma and all of Haley's serious quiet. He doesn't mind, not talking, and admittedly, Elena's presence makes it harder to articulate when she just effortlessly looks like she does and seems to know what to do and how everyone feels all the time. But if ever there is a time to remember his words in the presence of a pretty girl, it would be when she's one of the people who has the answers to how to save his brother and now sister.

"Honestly? I think because Roy shot at it, he pissed it off," Sam answers.

Ben's attention turns quickly to Elena when she kneels down, something on the forest floor catching her attention. She holds up a blue m&m for Ben to see, a trail of them leading off into the forest.

"They went this way," Ben says excitedly, moving to follow the trail.

Sam and Elena exchange amused, fond smiles at Dean's ingenuity.

"It's better than breadcrumbs," Sam says and Elena laughs and nods in agreement.

True to his word, Sam had shouldered Elena's backpack that morning, leaving her free to move much quicker than previously, so she easily overtakes Ben and goes back to leading the way, Sam holding up the rear.

Eventually Dean's improved breadcrumb trail leads them to an abandoned mine.

"I feel like we should make a drinking game out of this," Elena muses out loud. "Every time we run into a horror movie cliché on a hunt, we take a shot."

Sam laughs out loud.

"Dean'll love that, but we don't exactly have anything to take a shot of," he points out.

Elena raises an eyebrow at him. "You think there's no alcohol in that backpack?" she nods at the aforementioned pack. "What kind of hunter do you take me for?"

Sam looks at her. "You brought booze on a hunt," he says incredulously.

"I've lived with your brother for two years, what do you think?" she asks rhetorically. "There's a flask in the second pouch," she adds. Without further ado, she slips into the large hole between the rotting planks of wood that once made up the door.

Sam looks at Ben in disbelief. "She brought booze on a hunt."

Ben just smiles at him, even less sure of what to make of Elena than Sam is.

Sam shakes his head, wondering if Dean knows it's in there, or even suspects. He follows Elena into the mine, Ben trailing after him.

Elena stops him to pull out two flashlights from her backpack, handing one to Sam and keeping the other for herself. They descend further into darkness. A dozen or so yards in the wendigo's growl echoes out and Elena and Sam both instantly hit the lights and usher Ben over to the solid walls of the enclosure, peering around anxiously.

For the first time, they see the monster, heading back towards the entrance, and when Ben opens his mouth to exclaim in horror, Elena slaps her hand over his mouth and shushes him, Sam never taking his eye off the retreating monster, waiting to see if it will turn back at the sound.

Once it's out of sight Sam leads them down the tunnel that the wendigo had come out of, theorizing that it most likely leads to where it's keeping its victims, including Dean, and Haley and Tommy.

Instead of a graceful entrance, Sam and Ben fall rather abruptly through some rotting wood into a boneyard, Elena having instinctively leapt back when they began to descend.

She leans down over the hole, careful not to put any weight on the wood.

"Sam? Ben? Are you guys okay?" she calls down in hushed tones.

Ben lurches away from the bones.

"Yeah, we're fine," Sam calls back up, trying to keep his voice down. "I think you'd better come down here though," he adds, catching sight of something to his right.

Elena nods in agreement, and carefully begins to maneuver herself through the hole, Sam standing underneath to grab her by the waist and support most of her weight on her way down in order to prevent any injury. When her feet are on the ground, he points at what had that caught his attention and she follows his line of sight.

Dean and Haley hang from their bound wrists, both unconscious. Now that Elena is safe on the ground, Sam rushes to his brother, Elena following him and Ben making a beeline for Haley.

"Dean," Sam says, lightly shaking him in order to rouse him.

"Wake up," Ben says to Haley.

Elena rushes back to her abandoned backpack, grabbing a pocket knife from one of the pockets and bringing back to Sam, who's mammoth height allows him to cut down both Dean and Haley quite easily.

Sam hands Dean off to Elena so he can help Ben who struggles with Haley. Elena, not bothering with pretenses, lowers both herself and Dean to the ground, looking him over for serious injury as he takes stock of his surroundings and tries not to notice that she still smells amazing even after spending the night on a forest floor.

When Haley starts to cough, Elena points to her backpack, and while Sam can't practically read her mind like Dean seems to, he does know what that means. Inside the largest pocket there are three water bottles left. He hands one off to Ben for Haley and brings the other over to Dean himself.

"You sure you're all right?" Sam asks Dean.

"Yeah, yeah," Dean insists painfully. "Where is it?" he asks.

"It's gone for now," Elena says. Elena shows Ben how to rub feeling back into Haley's hands while she does the same for Dean, but Haley and Ben are quickly distracted by the sight of their brother hanging unconscious just across from them.

Ben helps Haley limp over to Tommy, and Sam follows after them, Elena's pocketknife ready in his hand.

"Tommy," Haley says, half convinced he's already gone, but still, she says his name again and puts her hand on his face, causing him to gasp awake and spook her. Her fear quickly turns to joy and she turns back to Sam.

"Cut him down," she says and Sam quickly complies, helping him gently to the ground where he can reunite with his siblings.

Leaning over Elena's legs, Dean reaches for the nearest abandoned pack behind her, having just noticing the verifiable graveyard of them behind her.

He pulls something out of one, looking up at her with a grin that she returns, and wordlessly she helps him stand.

"Check it out," he says, holding up flare gun in each for everyone to see.

"Flare guns," Sam says. "Those will work." He grins.

Dean spins them in his hands, wordlessly cocky in his usual way, reassuring both Elena and Sam further that he truly is okay.

Dean leads the way out, Elena one step behind him with Sam and the three Collins siblings following behind, Haley and Sam supporting Tommy between them.

The growling of the wendigo alerts them to its return, and Dean, Sam, and Elena position themselves at the ready.

"Looks like someone's home for supper," Dean says grimly.

"We'll never outrun it," Haley points out needlessly.

Dean looks over at her, unable to refute her statement. He then glances back at Elena and in a second they are on the same page, so Dean turns to Sam.

"You thinking what I'm thinking?" he asks him.

"Yeah, I think so," Sam replies grimly.

The wendigo growls menacingly.

"All right, listen to me," Dean starts, turning to the Collins'. "Stay with Sam, he's gonna get you out of here."

"What are you gonna do?" Haley asks him.

Dean winks quick as a blink and then takes off in another direction, not a word exchanged as Elena follows behind him.

"It's chow time, you freakin' bastard!" Dean's battle cry echoes throughout the cave, drawing more than enough attention to he and Elena, making it unnecessary for her to say a word. Dean's trash talk continues. "Yeah that's right, bring it on, baby! I taste good!"

A faint noise echoes throughout the cavern.

"Did she just, giggle?" Tommy asks, bewildered by his rescuers.

"Probably," Sam answers. "I'm starting to think she's lived with my brother for too long," he says, not entirely focused on the conversation. He leads them down a tunnel leading away from the direction that Elena and Dean had taken.

* * *

"Hey, you want some white meat, bitch?" Dean yells, both he and Elena keeping their eyes everywhere despite the ridiculous words coming out of his mouth. "I'm right here!"

Dean being loud enough for both of them leaves Elena to have her full attention on their surroundings, and as usual she doesn't disappoint. She nods her head forward, and Dean follows her, still yelling ridiculous taunting things for the wendigo to hear.

* * *

Sam attempts to lead the three siblings back towards the direction he and Ben and Elena had come in from, despite the change of levels. The growling grows louder and louder, and Sam indicates towards the direction they'd come in from.

"Get him out of here," Sam says, intent on luring the wendigo away and hopefully finding Dean and Elena.

"Sam no," Haley protests.

"Go!" Sam barks. "Go."

Ben tugs on Haley's arm, knowing that Sam's idea is their best bet.

"C'mon Haley," he says, and she reluctantly allows him to steer the three of them towards the entrance and away from Sam.

Sam turns back towards where the growling seems to be coming from, if he's closer to the wendigo than Dean and Elena then he'll do his best to kill it and clear the way for them.

It shows up behind him in another classic horror movie cliché – Sam takes a moment to regret that Elena has her backpack and therefore the flask, now would be an excellent time for a drink – he spins away from it, shooting off his flare preemptively, merely stunning it.

Without a weapon, Sam takes advantage of its distraction to sprint after the Collins' hurrying them to the exit. When they get there it is blocked off, unlike the one they came in through, Sam stands in front of them.

"Get behind me," he says, with nothing else to do and nowhere else to run.

The wendigo takes its time on its approach, moving leisurely, giving Dean enough time to arrive, flare gun at the ready.

"Hey!" he shouts, firing as soon as the wendigo turns to him. The wendigo bats its away with lightning quick reflexes, turning its head from the bright light, and right into the flames that Elena, who had fumblingly reached into her bag for their last line of defense – unbeknownst to anyone else but her – has directed at it.

They all watch it burn to death in stunned silence.

Finally, Sam speaks.

"Did you just make a flamethrower out of bug spray and a lighter?" his incredulity is only outweighed by his awe.

Elena sits down heavily.

"Yes, yes, I did," she says matter-of-factly.

Dean, slumped against the wall, smirks over at her.

"Dude, that is so hot," he deadpans.

* * *

They put together a plausible story on the hike back, and once the story has been told, Tommy is safely on his way to a hospital, and Dean gets his unsolicited kiss from the pretty girl – which Elena teases him about mercilessly, much to Sam's surprise – the three of them watch the siblings leave, and Dean, unable to resist levity even at his worse, deadpans again.

"Man, I hate camping."

"Me too," Sam says.

Elena says nothing, simply opens the back door of the impala and flops down across the backseat with a delighted groan like it's a king-sized bed with nine hundred thread count sheets and a mountain of pillows.

Dean nods in agreement with the sentiment before turning to Sam.

"Sam, you know we're gonna find Dad, right?" Dean says.

Sam nods. "Yeah, I know. But in the meantime," he turns to look at his brother, "I'm driving." He smirks.

Dean pulls the keys out of his pocket and tosses them over. Instead of heading for the front seat like Sam expects he goes around to the other back door.

"Move over, Gilbert," he says, and Sam isn't at all surprised when he slides into the driver's seat and looks into the rearview mirror to see Elena passed out against Dean's shoulder, his head propped on top of hers, already halfway to joining her in slumber.

He shakes his head, wondering how long the two of them are gonna torture him with whatever game they're playing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter title taken from in the woods somewhere by hozier

**Author's Note:**

> Chapter title from Pack It Up by the Pretenders.


End file.
